Wednesday, December 5, 2012

"JBW takes on RCH" 52 Comments

The Emoluments of Mars

        Poor old John B. Wells lost his Hoagland-virginity last night, as Coast-host. Three hours, and it did not go well for him.

        Things got off to a bad start when Wells said "So, remind me, it was Viking that took the original photo of the Face on Mars, right?" "No-no," replied the pseudoscientist. "Viking was in two parts, an orbiter and a lander. It was the orbiter that took the image." You could almost hear Wells' thoughts -- "Oh I get it, three hours of one-upmanship."

        Then it got zanier. The pseudoscientist went on to describe the image taken by Mars Global Surveyor in April 1998. He and his henchpersons have nothing but contempt for this image, because weather conditions at the time were about as bad as they can be on Mars. Only with extreme skill could Malin Space Science Systems (PI of the MOC) retrieve anything worth looking at at all.

[Image] image credit: Malin Space Science Systems

        Last night, unbelievably, instead of giving MSSS due credit for giving it their best shot, the pseudoscientist accused. He said "Malin waited until the fog was so thick that nothing could be seen, before taking that photo." That statement reveals such total lack of understanding of the general principles of orbital imaging that a knowledgeable host would have sent him away immediately, on grounds that he had nothing meaningful to offer. John Wells was NOT that knowledgeable host. We had more to suffer. Somehow, the really excellent image of Owen Mesa (as I prefer to call it, honoring Tobias Owen who first noticed the "face-like mesa") didn't get mentioned last night. I refer, of course, to the one shot by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2007, at about 100x the resolution of the original Viking pic. It didn't get mentioned because it totally falsifies the pseudoscientist's proposition that NASA has dragged its feet ("fought tooth and nail," I think he said) on giving us images.

[Image] image credit: HiRISE/JPL/Univ. Ariz
        Well, inevitably, we finally got to the very recent imagery of Gale crater, returned by the Curiosity rover in full color and very high resolution. The pseudoscientist says these images undoubtedly show ruined apartment blocks. They show clear evidence of "geometry, parallel lines, symmetry. Features that natural landforms simply cannot have." There was much confusion about where these images could be found -- not on the C2C web site, and not on enterprisemishmash either. It was left to Greg Ahrens, who seems to be a Hoagland alter ego in Facebookistan, to provide links to eight images. Here's a typical one:

[Image] image credit: JPL Oh, I see. Stratification. What a disappointment.

Off the scale
        Along around Hour 3, we got to the Accutron toy. The pseudoscientist persists in saying that he measured the torsion field with this apparatus, when of course he did nothing of the sort. Last night's explanation was, in fact, a denial in itself. He said (not verbatim) "The Accutron tuning fork normally vibrates at exactly 360 Hz. When I've taken it up pyramids, or to Stonehenge, it has shown readings of as much as 1000 Hz and as little as 14 Hz."


[Image] image credit: Richard Hoagland         It may be difficult to read the y-axis scale, so let me make it clear that its range is 359.269685 Hz to 360.750945 Hz. I don't doubt that it's quite possible to adjust that somewhat, but the proposition that it could be extended to a range of 1000 to 14 does rather stretch the old mind. In what sense does the word MEASURE have any meaning in the context of such wild excursions?

Update:
I e-mailed Bryan Mumford, MicroSet™ engineer, to ask if the apparatus was in fact capable of measuring such an enormous frequency range. His reply:

Yes, MicroSet could measure such excursions. But I am skeptical that any outside influence caused an Accutron to vary by so much unless it's broken.
        Well, finally, a Link to the Conscious Life Expo 90-min talk (which included the sneaker on Mars) did in fact appear on Enterprise Mash. Here it is -- somebody please let me know what it's like. I've had enough for now.
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Blogger Chris Lopes said...
So Hoagie spent 3 hours going over the same old material? Yes, I'm as shocked as Inspector Renault about that. The guy has nothing new and hasn't for quite some time. No wonder he stays off his FB page (aside from his Greg Ahrens personae) these days.

Speaking of "Greg", this character claimed (several months ago) that Fearless Leader would have a new paper "in a week or two" detailing all the cool Gale Crater goodness he was talking about last night. I've PM-ed "Greg" a few times asking him about that, but for some unknown reason, he doesn't reply. I expected a sock puppet to be more responsive than that.

P.S. Thanks again for listening to this clown so we don't have to.
December 2, 2012 10:09 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
For those of you who were thinking of asking Santa for an RCH dvd for xmas, or for those of you who foolishly decided to spend your money on food and paying your bills, instead of doing whatever was necessary to get to RCH's Oct 6th Expo Conference, you can clear 2 hrs from your schedule and watch it here:

youtube.com/watch?v=RGucXXWm_RQ

It's not the worst 2 hrs of Hoaglandisms (at least there's quite a few pictures to look if your mind starts to wander). If you want a quick summary of what RCH says, the answer is "YES!" to the following questions: does he say Gale Crater a larger version of the Elenin time capsule? Would he use artists impressions in a slide show and call it "stunning confirmation" of ancient ruins? Did Curiosity have to land when and where it did because Mars was exactly 19.5 degrees over the whitehouse? Did the NASA scientists at the public press conferences blink in morse code "the official story is BS"? Would Curiosity find something that would be the ultimate 'October Surprise' and win an election? Is barry the embodiment of Horus? Are all the weird-looking rocks on Mars stunning confirmation, stunning confirmation, stunning confirmation of artificiality? You bet they are!

Happy viewing...
December 2, 2012 11:43 AM
Blogger Chris Lopes said...
Thanks for the link Anon. I might try watching this train wreck of irrational thinking just for the hours entertainment value. What I'd like to know is how he managed to keep it down to 2 hours. I didn't think Hoagland could order a pizza in less than 3 1/2 hours. The man sure loves to hear himself talk.
December 2, 2012 3:24 PM
Blogger Julian Janssen said...
Anon. and Chris,

I love your comments. I find Hoagland very entertaining... If you suspend your capacity for critical thinking, he's quite convincing... But he does seem to really be in love with the sound of his own voice intoning nonsensical garbage about the cosmos.
December 2, 2012 4:29 PM
Blogger expat said...
Hey, Julian, aren't you allowing comments on Interpose? I posted this morning and it disappeared immediately.
December 2, 2012 4:47 PM
Blogger Misti Parker said...
Shoe @ 2:05:21
December 2, 2012 4:54 PM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...
The above link doesn't seem to work, so copy & paste:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=PLwhgXSIAAuQjdXfyoqQWnDgOMhs1ZY7ft&v=_M0DhIA4p30

Shoe @ 2:05:21
December 2, 2012 5:03 PM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...
Shoe at foot of Curiosity:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-p3HxlTve2C4/ULwOiuljFiI/AAAAAAAAAEc/ob0M9d1QOLA/w497-h373/Nike4.JPG


Close up:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Bw7CWmGyBAk/ULwObHZA_3I/AAAAAAAAAD8/LHqFdtvhSwA/w497-h373/nike5.JPG


Higher contrast:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-TR5MevkrlPM/ULwOn1Ry9SI/AAAAAAAAAE0/c_xBxxMUB74/w497-h373/Nike3.JPG
December 2, 2012 6:35 PM
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Blogger Julian Janssen said...
Yeah, I allow comments. I'm not even moderating prior to post.
December 2, 2012 8:43 PM
Blogger Julian Janssen said...
I see a comment from you. Did you post a second one?
December 2, 2012 8:47 PM
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This comment has been removed by the author.
December 2, 2012 10:46 PM
Blogger Misti Parker said...
If that isn't a shoe, then what is it? If we can't tell for sure, then what good are having pictures from Curiosity? If the image is fake, then who faked it? Did Hoagland paint the shoe in, or did NASA? What a dorky item to airbrush in. IS Nike the sponsor of the Curiosity mission, or what?
December 2, 2012 11:47 PM
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Blogger FlightSuit said...
I am not a fan of John B. Wells. Superficially, he sounds like a more substantial guy than George Noory, but that's just because he has a deep, solid-sounding voice. Let Wells talk for any length of time, however, and to the right guest, and you'll soon learn that Wells is all too happy to buy into any number of crazy, right-wing conspiracy theory.

I've heard him coddle (and agree with) guests who thought global warming was a hoax.
December 3, 2012 12:59 AM
Blogger Julian Janssen said...
In Hoagland's recently released video presentation he said his watch is slow. I wonder if his wristwatch is a ~40 year old Bulova Accutron! :D
December 3, 2012 1:49 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
That's what I meant by it not being the worst 2hrs possible, because at least there were slides to look at instead of Hoagie's smugness and self-adulating ego assaulting your eyes as well as just your ears. Hoagie talked for 2h08m, although one of the first thing's he said at the start was "I only have 90 mins to do this". Indeed, Hoagie does love the sound of his own voice, whether it's presenting ground-breaking science-y stuff or being the great public entertainer -of course, us clueless peons don't get to hear the great master utter a word about highly-important findings until after his ego-fluffing, brainwashed chica has had a few mins to gives us an extremely important introduction, where we're reminded of Hoagie's vital consultancy role during the NASA moon missions, his being head of science on the world-renowned C2C show, and some science version of the Nobel prize he won for something once (an award he may or may not have given to himself, as yet unconfirmed).

Hell, it's almost worth the 2hrs just to see what sneakers martians used to wear...
December 3, 2012 4:32 AM
Blogger Trained Observer said...
He name drops Clarke and does a commercial for his book in the first 6 minutes. The "shoe" looks to be very, very, small. Rocks and more rocks. It's rocks all the way down.
December 3, 2012 6:37 AM
Blogger expat said...
Julian: I see it now. In Firefox, there's a lot of black-on-black text that needs mousing over before it becomes visible. I know where to look for the black-on-black comments link now.
December 3, 2012 6:41 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Ah yes, how could I forget! I think half the presentation was Hoagie name-dropping his "dear friends" and using the phrase "stunning confirmation". (I think rotation, rotation, rotation may have become repetition, repetition, repetition)
December 3, 2012 8:09 AM
Blogger Trained Observer said...
Here are the "apartments".
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00113/mcam/0113MR0696001000E1_DXXX.jpg

"It looks like a motel from the fifties that one might have seen along Route 66, he said, noting that "this is architecture, these are ruins, this is an ancient civilization."

What an absolutely insane assertion.

Snake oil pitch or delusional mindset? I don't think he believes a word it of himself. This is just an attempt to stay current and have something new to talk about on the woo-woo talk circuit.


December 3, 2012 11:05 AM
Anonymous Strahlungsamt said...
Looks like NASA is obeying the Egyptian gods and Brookings again. Now there's no history changing discovery on Mars after all. It was just some nerdy scientist getting carried away with a reporter.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2012/12/03/curiosity_mars_rover_sees_no_organics_in_mars_sample.html

And, if that wasn't bad enough, they're denying the recently discovered necklace on Mars too.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2012/11/29/hoax_site_says_nasa_s_curiosity_rover_found_plastic_beads_on_mars.html

Fear not folks, Dick and Mikey will contact their super seekrit sources and provide some answers real soon.

Stay Tuned......
December 3, 2012 11:48 AM
Anonymous Strahlungsamt said...
@Anonymous

Just type "Hoagland" into youtube and the entire 1,950 volumes of Encyclopedia Hoaglandia are yours for the downloading.

If you're in Wal-Mart in Albuquerque any time soon, give Hoagie my regards. He'll either be mopping the toilets or working the cash register.

Stay Tuned....
December 3, 2012 11:54 AM
Blogger FlightSuit said...
There is nothing in that "apartments" photo even big enough to be apartments. I find this so confusing! Could somebody possibly use Photoshop to draw an outline around the features in that photo that Hoagland says look like apartments? I got nothin'.
December 3, 2012 12:19 PM
Blogger Ms Emma Peel said...
The rock formations labeled as "Martian condos or apartments" are at best few centimeters wide. To be honest,I am becoming more & more intolerant with professional ass clowns like Mike Bara, Hoagland & the intellectual midgets who follow them.sharing oxygen with morons affects my skin condition.Can we at least suggest to rehabilitate eugenics as social program?.
December 3, 2012 12:56 PM
Blogger Julian Janssen said...
Expat,

I'll look into that firefox thing. I had a few technical difficulties in this post, probably because I had quotes and cleared the formatting and stupidly made some of the text black (but I thought I'd corrected all of that). I'm not used to a black background.
December 3, 2012 1:23 PM
Blogger Misti Parker said...
The apartments are those long horizontal ridges all over the landscape. If you look closely, they resemble harmonicas.
December 3, 2012 2:06 PM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...


I've isolated one of many apartments from the image posted at Coast. Notice the pair of pyramids in your lower right hand corner. You'll have to magnify it yourself, though. I don't have a good program for it here right now.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/109420507346092930993/posts
December 3, 2012 2:17 PM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...
To magnify your view, simultaneously press Ctl and + a few times.
December 3, 2012 2:22 PM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...
http://taosearthships.com/89687/index.htm

http://taosearthships.com/89687/P1010103.JPG

http://taosearthships.com/89687/P1010110.JPG
December 3, 2012 3:32 PM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...
Do you believe this, or should we wait for the peer review? --MP

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/03/organics-on-mars-curiosity-rover_n_2232436.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

Organics On Mars: Curiosity Rover Finds Evidence Of Organic Compounds On Red Planet
12/03/2012 1:23 pm EST

Speculation as to the nature of the announcement was rampant in the days leading up to the conference. John Grotzinger, the principal investigator on the Curiosity mission, recently told NPR the data from an analysis of Martian soil "is gonna be one for the history books."

But NASA last week issued a press release calling "rumors and speculation that there are major new findings" from the Curiosity mission "incorrect."


http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20121203.html

NASA Mars Rover Fully Analyzes First Soil Samples
12.03.12

December 3, 2012 4:06 PM
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Blogger Esteban Navarro said...
oh, Misty, I have to apologize, you were right: this video makes it clear that NASA has technology the scientific community in the whole world don´t really know:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4hFwJm41h4

No, seriously, I love this clip and this song. And I dedicate it to all as a gift for Christmas...
December 3, 2012 5:52 PM
Anonymous Strahlungsamt said...
@Misti
See my post above about the over zealous scientist and the over enthusiastic reporter.

On the subject of apartment blocks, some of you must be familiar with the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, near the closest point to Scotland. Basically, it's a bunch of rocks that formed into hexagonal shapes due to some ancient volcanic activity (it was used on a Led Zeppelin album cover).
Strange that no one claims that ancient aliens built it. I wonder why.
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/giants-causeway
December 3, 2012 5:53 PM
Blogger Ms Emma Peel said...
I dont understand why some are even getting into debunking this Martian "apartments" picture.Utterly ridiculous.There is no need to be a geologist or astrophysicist to understand the scale & the nature of the photo.
December 4, 2012 12:32 AM
Blogger Misti Parker said...
Because HOAGLAND brought up the issue; that's why. What's the name of this blog?
December 4, 2012 9:50 AM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...
My point about NASA is close to one that Hoagland makes. Which is, that NASA controls all the data. They don't release all the data. What data that NASA does release, it's often times out of context, and the fuck with the photos. The data is corrupted because NASA is corrupt.

Where I diverge from Hoagland is, that he want's to Democratize secret torsion technology, just as he attempted to get the mud logs for Deep Water Horizon area in the Gulf of Mexico released to the public. President Carter officially designated oil to be a matter of national security and no nation has ever permitted an independent audit for public release of it's oil reserves.

Hoagland asserts that the oligarchy which controls torsion technology is an insane group of malevolent totalitarians. It's just that I'm not convinced that Hoagland doesn't represent a similar competing group.

Do I have proof? No. All I have is a conspiracy hypothesis, but what's the name of this blog?
December 4, 2012 10:00 AM
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Anonymous Anonymous said...
JBW looks more like Frankenstein's monster than that rock looks like a shoe...

Silly Ho-gland.
December 4, 2012 11:07 AM
Blogger Ms Emma Peel said...
Obviously NASA is not controlling all the data since ubber intelligent individuals like Hoagland & Misti Parker are tearing the veil of cover up, & bringing to light astonishing scientific discoveries.Now what I am dying to know is, if the kid`s abandoned sneaker belongs to a child native to Mars,
or most probably, as the victim of Satanist pedophile snuff movies ring,he was dumped on the surface of the Red planet in the context of a ritual sacrifice....
December 4, 2012 11:12 AM
Blogger Trained Observer said...
The whole NASA as some sort of sci-fi fantasy version of CHOAS or SMERSH is just unsupportable Misti. Or is all that tongue-in-cheek for you? Hoagland is a delusional fantasist at best. The only conspiracy to keep "Torsion Hyperdiminsional Physics" (or any other fantasy technology) from the world is in Hoagland's mind. I have yet to see any reason to think Hoagland or any of his associates have any great insight into anything whatsoever. It's a sad comedy about exploiting the credulity of others and does nothing to advance our understanding of Mars, the Moon, or anything else other than the psychology of pseudo-science. Or so it seems to me.
December 4, 2012 1:09 PM
Blogger Julian Janssen said...
I was wondering why nobody seemed to call him that, Anon... Everyone I know seems to prefer Hoaxland.
December 4, 2012 3:27 PM
Blogger Ms Emma Peel said...
"Hoagland is just like Sagan, only less credible".
Because you used to be personally acquainted with Carl Sagan?.Misty Parker, you have the luxury of speaking about someone you know absolutely nothing about.I am almost envious (in-spite of the fact I am a personal friend with someone who was Carl Sagan`s only assistant,protégé & disciple.

"Abductees are psychotic dreamers, who substitute ETs and UFOs for elves and fairies of bygone-days"
He was not alone.John Keel,Jacques Vallee,Allen Greenfield & others amongst UFO researchers who have done their home works,also believe that the Extra terrestrial hypothesis is the less credible explanation.
December 4, 2012 4:15 PM
Blogger Misti Parker said...
Interesting that the administrator here, chose to censor my last comments.

I go with what the Abductees say, not what over paid kibitzers say.
December 4, 2012 5:55 PM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...
I don't believe that the UFOs and the related intelligent entities are ETs either. From the Orbs which I encountered, my impression is that they are inter-dimensional. Carl Sagan may have been absolutely correct that elves and fairies are the same as ETs in so far as they might very well be the same demonic beings.

Sigmund Freud originally developed the Trauma Theory of psychosis based upon the testimony of his patients of their having been sexually abused as children. Dr Freud was ostracized by peers and the public alike for his thesis, because they were in denial of what they found to be repulsive. As a result of rejection, Freud came up with his Oedipus complex which rather blames the victim rather than the abuser. Peers and public much preferred that one. Of course it really made the patients symptoms much worse, because to be told that they were only imagining the trauma which actually had been inflicted upon them, convinced them not to trust any reality, so they really lost touch.

Nowadays, however, trauma theory is widely acknowledged in all too many truly tragic cases. To dismiss Abductees as delusional is the height professional chauvinism.

Actual witnesses may not have perfect understanding of any particular experience, but they have more information about the facts than any prosecutor. A true scientific investigator tries to get at the truth, not bury all the evidence, or discredit a witness without at least first making a fair and thorough investigation. Failing that, no one has the right to defame somebody simply for the sake of expediency.

December 4, 2012 6:24 PM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...
In the courtroom scene of the movie based upon Carl Sagan's novel, 'Contact,' Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway testifies before Congress that she believes her perception of having traveled light years away to encounter an highly intelligent extra terrestrial being. At the badgering of a senator, she confesses that as a scientist, she must remain skeptical; that there is the possibility of her being delusional, but that she nevertheless believes her experience to be veracious as perceived.

What was not presented as evidence or testimony at that hearing, though, is that the Machine that she had traveled in was shooting out lightning bolts and exerted a gravitational effect on the mission control ship full of technicians, which nearly capsized it in the bay.

December 4, 2012 6:42 PM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...
By the way, the Machine in Contact resembles a large gyroscope.

http://divinecosmos.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=95&Itemid=36


"Furthermore, without any knowledge of Kozyrev’s work, in 1989 G. Hayasaka and S. Tekeyuchi discovered similar weight-loss effects with rotating 150-gram gyroscopes, and more recently obtained success by dropping the gyroscopes between two precision laser beam detectors."
December 4, 2012 7:00 PM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...
The prosecuting attorney does not car about the facts of a case or the innocence of the defendant. All the prosecutor cares about is getting a conviction.

A prosecuting attorney is not scientific. Peer review testing of a theory is the scientific method of validation or refutation.

Arbitrary debunking is not peer review testing of a theory.
December 4, 2012 7:09 PM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...
For a patient to be cured under Freudian psychiatry, the patient may have to sublimate actual trauma and affect normal behavior as defined by a society in denial. As a result, the victim might adopt the behavior of the abuser.
December 4, 2012 7:21 PM
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Blogger FlightSuit said...
Over the years I have been personal friends with several people who could be described as "abductees" in that they experienced things which closely resembled the classic alien abduction scenario, and none of them struck me as psychotic dreamers.

In fact, one of them is one of my oldest friends, and he is one of the most strident atheists and skeptics I have ever known. Like many abductees, he did not ask to have the experiences he had, and was not interested in UFOs or anything spiritual or paranormal when he had his experiences.

In fact, he's still not very interested in those topics, and he remains a skeptic despite his having met the aliens face-to-face on multiple occasions.

It is deeply insulting and unfair to characterize a man like that as a "psychotic dreamer."
December 4, 2012 7:22 PM
Blogger Misti Parker said...
FlightSuit, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
December 4, 2012 7:26 PM
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Blogger FlightSuit said...
Please note that when I say, "...his having met the aliens face-to-face on multiple occasions," I am referring to his perception of what he experienced.

That is to say, I am not claiming it is an objective fact that he literally met flesh-and-blood, non-human intelligent beings. I am merely acknowledging that this is the experience he perceived.

To his credit, my friend is as careful as I am to draw a distinction between what he experienced and what can be considered objectively true. He has not embraced the notion that aliens physically exist, and he seems very open to the idea that what he experienced is a function of how the human mind works.
December 4, 2012 7:27 PM
Blogger FlightSuit said...
The story of my friend's experience is complicated, however, by the fact that his girlfriend at the time is a corroborating witness to much of what he experienced.
December 4, 2012 7:29 PM
Blogger John Cooper said...
Misti.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIcIW6uDyeY
December 4, 2012 10:24 PM
Blogger Misti Parker said...
If human perception is so in doubt, how can we trust even the published results of independent researchers who peer review theories by testing them for themselves?

It's like the Eastern philosophical assertion that "all is an illusion".

To them I say, take a skillet and go whack yourself in the noggin.

It's all in your head.
December 5, 2012 11:21 AM
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Blogger Misti Parker said...
Seth Shostak is the most boring guest on Coast to Coast AM. SETI is the biggest waste of time and money of any long assed experiment on the planet or Outer Space.

Peter Davenport gets much more results and runs his operation on little more than swamp gas.
December 5, 2012 11:29 AM
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