Monday, July 11, 2011

Tea and Happy Trails


We all spend far too much time on the Internet these days, talking instead of living, pontificating about how things should be, instead of actually doing something to change them.

With respect to the paranormal, as with most things in life, "doing something" means seeking out personal experiences, both your own as an experiencer and those of others for context, and to learn from them. Alas, the lingua franca of the "subject" these days (again, as with most things in our society) is "discussion" of people (i.e. gossip), as opposed to ideas, or events, or cases. Accordingly, I'm putting The Other Side of Truth on indefinite hiatus, until at least this time next year, at which point I'll see where things stand. Maybe the journey will lead me back here (although I sincerely doubt it), but at the moment, and for the forseeable future, to paraphrase Jacques Vallee years ago, I've said all that I care to say in public.
Victoria-by-the-Sea, PEI

A couple of thoughts before I wander off to my metaphorical Walden Pond.

First, for updates on Beyond Best Evidence, which will be my final film about the UFO phenomenon, check out my company's website. You can also view all of the other films I've made about UFOs and the paranormal, including two episodes of Ghost Cases, at the website for free.

Second, the blog will still be here, although I'll be going through it over the next few months and removing a lot of old posts, particularly the ones that relate solely to personalities as opposed to ideas, or cases, or stories. In the end, a more streamlined and relevant version will remain.

The one last piece of advice I will offer is to get out there and live your life, as opposed to living through someone else's. While doing so, make sure to find time for proper Tea, one of the last remaining vestiges of a civilized and cultured society.

The Orient Hotel, Victoria-by-the-Sea, PEI...

... home of Mrs. Proffit's Tea Room!
Tell them I sent you, and make sure to have a scone with clotted cream and jam as well!

In the meantime, you can follow some of my ongoing adventures, interests and opinions, totally unrelated to the paranormal, at Day Tripper and The Philosopher King, should you be interested.

Happy trails,
Paul Kimball

Priorities

There is apparently much chatter as of late (on various blogs, and podcasts - the usual suspects) about a UFO researcher, and claims that he made up phony academic credentials. In the grand scheme of things (even "ufological" things), it is really much ado about nothing. But people these days love to talk about personalities, because it's the great leveler - you don't need a degree, or any qualifications whatsoever, to gossip, or attack people, or pile on. You barely need a pulse.

Meanwhile, I decided to "get away from it all" this weekend, and took a trip to Prince Edward Island with an old and dear friend.





Some things matter... and some things don't.

Did the UFO researcher currently under fire fake his credentials? It seems like he did.

Does it make much of a difference? No, not really, other than to him and those who worked with him.

What of any significance is left to discuss, once the lie has been exposed? Nothing.

Will it help solve the UFO enigma? Absolutely not. It's a sideshow.

It's all about having your priorities in order, folks.

Paul Kimball

Thursday, July 07, 2011

Change, the Future and the ETH



When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE, sparking the civil war which led to the ultimate replacement of the Roman Republic with the Roman Empire, it was on horseback, leading his legions of soldiers armed with swords, spears, and other similar weapons.

When the Roman Empire in the West fell in 476 CE, after five centuries as the pre-eminent power in the ancient world, it was to Germanic armies that wielded more or less the same equipment as Caesar's legions had. When Belisarius re-captured large parts of the Western Empire in the middle of the 6th century for Emperor Justinian, he too led armies that would not have seemed unfamiliar to Caesar.

Belisarius
Thus, while there were certainly changes in tactics, and formations, and even to some degree materiel, the armies led by Belisarius looked much like the armies led by Caesar six centuries earlier. There was no fundamental difference.

The same cannot be said for developments in the 20th century. Admiral Jellicoe's Grand Fleet, the foundation of British Imperial might in 1914, and the victor at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, was irrelevant by the time the Second World War ended in 1945. Blockades and great naval battles between surface fleets were meaningless when compared with first with air power, as demonstrated by the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse in 1941, much less the development of atomic weapons by the end of the war - all of which came to the fore within less than a decade.

For centuries - indeed, in many respects, for millennia - human development remained relatively stagnant. Change, when it came, was generally slow and fitful.

Contrast that with my home computer. When I founded Redstar Films, just twelve years ago, I bought desktop computers for the office for my home that were near the top of the line, and which were specifically assembled by a local company. They each had 20 GB of hard drive space. The mass produced computer I'm using as I type this has 300 GB of hard drive space, and is hooked up to a separate drive that contains 500 GB of space. On the shelf nearby is another drive with a TB of space. I can edit an entire film on this computer, and post it immediately to various places on the Internet, or send it via FTP to someone in Asia, or Europe.

I could go on, but the point should be clear. Human progress has been accelerating exponentially since the beginning of the 20th century, and in particular since the end of the Second World War, at a rate that makes all of human history before then look like the slow crawl of an infant. And we haven't even really gotten started yet.

So, on the one hand, when I hear someone like Michio Kaku say that travel to the stars is far beyond our capabilities right now, and that any civilization which would have figured out how to do it must be much more advanced than us, I have to agree. It's common sense. The problem, however, comes with the timeline that he (and others) then impose for the development of that technology - not just decades, or even centuries, but millennia.


The problem is that Kaku et al assume a rate of progress for any civilization similar to human progress prior to the Twentieth Century - that is to say, slow and in fits and starts. They assume that, like Belisarius compared to Caesar, astronauts in six hundred years will more or less be using the same technology that astronauts today are using. But that doesn't seem to be the way that our development is trending. The predictive models of the past are no longer relevant.

It's possible that they're right, of course. It might even be likely. But given the way that things have gone, and are going, it cannot be said that they are certainly correct. The technological developments necessary to get us to the stars may not be thousands of years away - they may only be hundreds of years away, or perhaps even less. We just don't know anymore.

Predicting the future is a tricky thing, made trickier with each passing year.





Accordingly, it's not unreasonable to speculate that a civilization in our nearby "galactic neighborhood" could have developed these abilities before us, and made their way here at some point, without having to imagine them as god-like beings so far in advance of us that we would not be able to recognize them, or communicate with them.

That may well be the case, but it's worth remembering that it may not.

Paul Kimball

Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Unified Field Radio appearance



My recent appearance on the Unified Field Radio program with Justin Brown is now available - you can listen in to the episode here. We chatted about Beyond Best Evidence, Best Evidence, ghosts, UFOs, Stan Friedman and the ETH, Mac Tonnies and the cryptoterrestrial hypothesis, and all sorts of other stuff.

The program airs on 88.1 FM (CKDU) in Halifax, Nova Scotia - well worth checking out.

Paul Kimball

Pop Matters: Smiths & Housemartins, "This Charming Caravan"



Apropos of nothing, really, other than me thinking this is absolutely awesome. My two favourite English bands of the 80s, and two of my favourite songs by them mashed up together.

I'll send this out to good pal and fellow traveler Nick Redfern, who I know is a huge fan of both The Smiths and The Housemartins, and who has just sent me a copy of his new MIB book for review.

See... it's apropos of something after all!

Paul Kimball

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Pop Matters: The Northern Pikes, "Unimportant"

A thought-provoking pop gem from the great Canadian band The Northern Pikes.



No matter how different we may seem to each other in this life, we're all headed for the same end, and a final equality. In our shared "unimportance" lies a recognition of our true humanity - and the beginnings of an awareness of our our real importance.

Paul Kimball

The Morality Pill



Apropos of Evolving Consciousness, Empathy and Advanced Hon-Human Intelligence, a post I wrote back in late April, there's a thought-provoking opinion piece in today's Globe and Mail that I recommend to everyone - Would We Swallow A Morality Pill, by Guy Kahane, who is deputy director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. Kahane asks the following question: Should we use our growing scientific understanding of the basis of human morality to try to make people morally better?

Here's an excerpt:
It would be ideal if individuals could freely explore different ways to improve themselves, whether by practising mindfulness, reading moral philosophy or, yes, by taking a “morality” pill. But it’s also true that, although some people are eager to take pills that make them feel better, it’s not so obvious that people would want to take pills that would make them morally better. It’s not clear people really want to be morally better. And those who, like the psychopathic Alex [of A Clockwork Orange], need the most help are probably those who would want it least.
Well worth a look, and then consideration, less so for the idea that an actual "morality pill" might be invented than for the question that Kahane leaves the reader with:

"Will we want to take them if they ever become available? And what does it say about us if we won't."

Paul Kimball

Monday, July 04, 2011

Synchronicity



Long before my recent Los Angeles run of what Walter Bosley called "synchronicities", I actually made a performance film for Bravo here in Canada called - you guessed it - Synchronicity. This film featured pianist Heather Schmidt and cellist Shauna Rolston, talking about their friendship and creative collaboration, and performing music written by Schmidt, including a piece I specifically commissioned for the film titled - you guessed it again - "Synchronicity".

In the context of the paranormal, and the possibility of interaction with an advanced non-human intelligence, I think Shauna's comments about communication, and the relationship between the composer and the musician as interpreter, are particularly interesting.

Heather and Shauna also talk about how they "fit together". I always wonder whether these kinds of things are just coincidences, or whether there might be something more at work. Do we just get lucky when we meet people with whom we have a connection, or do we meet these people for a reason? Perhaps, if you give any credence to the idea of reincarnation, we travel through our "lives" linked to the same group of people, each of us fulfilling a different role in the next life (my dad, for example, might be my son or daughter in the next life, or my best pal). Maybe that's why, when you first meet someone and feel like you've known them your whole life, you have - just not this "life", but one before... or, if you see time not as a linear construct but more of a circle, then perhaps a "life" still to come.

That would be the ultimate synchronicity.

Paul Kimball

Friedman on Sagan, NASA, Project Blue Book, space exploration

Over the past couple of years, I posted several clips from a pre-interview I conducted with Stan Friedman in 2000 (while researching the documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real), but I finally got around to putting them all into one video this past weekend.



Stan discusses a number of subjects, including Carl Sagan, Project Blue Book, space travel, and NASA.

Paul Kimball

Friday, July 01, 2011

Canada Day



In honour of Canada Day, here I am in 1990 proudly wearing the uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, while stationed at Ingonish Beach, Nova Scotia.

Paul Kimball