Ufological "Front Page Challenge"

One of my favourite shows when I was growing up was Front Page Challenge on the CBC here in Canada. The show featured four panelists, usually well-known journalists, who would ask yes-or-no questions in an attempt to correctly identify a mystery challenger connected to a front-page news item, as well as the news item itself. After the panelists had guessed correctly - or been stumped - they would proceed to interview the challenger.

Along those lines, today at Above and Beyond we have a special guest, and a series of questions asked by our ace panel, comprised of Rear Admiral Zorgrot, Zoltan the Hound of Hell, and Fox Mulder, with the answers from our mystery guest. You the reader will then be able to guess the identity of the mystery guest, with a free copy of Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings to the first person whocorrectly identifies our mystery guest.

Here we go:

Zorgrot: Are you a world-renowned UFO expert?

Mystery guest: Yes.

Zoltan: Woof, woof, grr... GRRR!!!

Mystery guest: Umm... sure, yes.

Mulder: Do you believe that the Roswell Incident was a crashed flying saucer from outer space?

Mystery guest: Yes.

Mulder (follow-up): Do you also believe that the Roswell Incident involved a second crashed saucer, on the Plains of San Agustin?

Mystery Guest: Yes.

Zorgrot: Do you believe that the 1948 Aztec incident involved the crash of an alien spacecraft?

Mystery guest: Yes.

Zoltan: Woof, woof, grr... GRRR!!!

Mystery guest: Umm...

Host: Moving on... Mr. Mulder.

Mulder: Do you believe that the United States Air Force was involved in a shooting war with alien spacecraft in the early 1950s?

Mystery guest: Yes.

Zorgrot: Do you believe that the supposed super-secret organization known as MJ-12 was real?

Mystery guest: Yes.

Zoltan: Woof, woof, grrr... GRRR!!!

Host: Okay, that's all the questions we have time for. It's time to guess who our mystery guest is...

As I said, I'll leave that up to you the reader... but in the meantime we take a brief break for the news, where we will show video of Dr. James McDonald and Dr. J. Allen Hynek spinning in their graves, which definitely qualifies as high strangeness.

Paul Kimball

The Decline of Serious UFO Research

As of late, I have come in under fire by certain lonely killjoys on the Internet, who clearly have nothing better to do with their time (like actual research) for seemingly combining research into UFOs with having a good time (aka "partying"). Oh, how I wish all of the rumours about me were true. Alas, not so much... although I did have a fair number of Stella Artois at ye olde local watering hole last night.

What's even more laughable is that he accuses me of "womanizing", presumably because I've given young Brittany Babakioff an opportunity to meet people like Greg Bishop and Nick Redfern who work in a subject she's interested in, and I've helped open a few doors with people in the UFO community for her, i.e. Stuart Miller at Alien Worlds, and I will hopefully be employing her in a research capacity sooner rather than later for future film projects (she's that good, folks). Shame on me for trying to get young people, especially women, involved in UFO research. I should be tarred and feathered! As for the lonely killjoy, I would say that he should apologize to Brittany, but he's not the apologizing kind (just ask Alfred Lehmberg, whose music can be heard below)... and Brittany has no idea who he is anyway (which makes her a member of a very large group of people).



However, even if I was partying up a storm here, there and everywhere, I doubt that serious UFO research would crumble - even I don't have a big enough ego to think that what I do or don't do could have that kind of impact!

But the aforementioned lonely killjoy's posts aren't really about UFO research, serious or otherwise - rather, they are simply the same old trolling that he has indulged in, both within the UFO research community and in other areas, for years now. Don't be fooled into thinking he has the best interests of UFO research at heart... as always, it's all about him. Once you know that, however, you can have some fun with him, because his responses are always so predictable! As a British friend of mine says, like a toy robot, the lonely killjoy is easy to "wind up"... although like a toy robot, he never really does anything different, which means that after a while you get tired of him, and move on to something more interesting. Then one day you remember that you have this toy robot in your drawer, and that it might be fun to wind it up and watch it go again, at least for a little while, until it gets boring again (note: my apologies to all toy robots everywhere for making this analogy).

Mind you, there are party animals related to UFOs. For example...



Now, if you don't have a sense of humour, you probably won't find this clip funny. Too bad for you, because I think it's hilarious (hat tip to my uncle Hollis Kimball for the lead).

I just hope that by posting it I haven't destroyed serious UFO research. ;-)

Paul Kimball

Ufology and Perspective

Three years ago, a well-known ufologist sent me a de-classified Top Secret memo from 1947 that read as follows:

16 December 1947

MEMORANDUM FOR DR. BUSH:

Subject: Preparation Against a Sneak Attack

1. At the meeting of the War Council on 18 December the following decision was reached:

Secretary Forrestal appointed a committee consisting of Dr. Bush, Mr. Souers, and General Gruenther, with Dr. Bush as chairman, to examine this problem in all its facets, particularly its relation to civil defense. This committee is to render a report covering the best manner of handling these problems from an organizational standpoint.

2. Your committee will be considered a committee of the War Council, and his office is prepared to furnish such personnel, funds, and other forms of assistance as may be required in the prosecution of the committee's work. As in the case of all committees of the War Council, your committee will be authorized to call on all agencies under the Secretary of Defense for such assistance as the committee may from time to time require.

3. I recognize that the problem before your committee is a difficult one and that it will require some time for you to prepare any recommendations. At the same time, I would appreciate it if you would keep the War Council periodically advised as to the progress which is being made.

JOHN H. OHLY
Special Assistant to the Secretary

Now, if you were to show this to anyone outside ufology even remotely familiar with the time period, they would no doubt tell you that the meeting was clearly designed to deal with a sneak attack from the Soviet Union, which is what all American defense planning was focused on in 1947, a very turbulent year at the beginning of the Cold War, where the risk of a "hot war" was very real indeed (see the Wikipedia entry for that period for a reasonably good summary of events).

The ufologist who sent this to me, however, saw it differently, as seen by the fact that he wrote "by whom?" in the margin next to the phrase "Preparation Against a Sneak Attack" - the implication being that the meeting may have been discussing a sneak attack by aliens, not the Soviets.

This... "interpretation" (to be kind) shows a complete lack of historical perspective and understanding. It also shows a ufologist who is sadly typical, particularly amongst the "Cosmic Watergate" group, i.e. one who is less concerned with logic, reason, and the truth, than he / she is about fitting everything into their very small "it's all about Roswell / ET / conspiracy" box. You can see the most recent manifestation of this way of "thinking" this week in Steven Bassett's paranoid ranting about how Google has censored his "open letter" to Senator Hillary Clinton (see here for the text of Bassett's press release).

This is what the ET / conspiracist types do - they filter everything through their own myopic world view. Unfortunately, this is the point of view that gets reported most often in the mainstream media, not because they are part of some over-arching conspiracy, but because the conspiracists themselves are the people amongst all UFO researchers who yell the loudest, and so therefore attract the most attention.

This is bad history, pure and simple - the kind that would get a person flunked out of a 1st year university course. But in the wacky world of ufology, it often passes as received wisdom from on high... which is a sad but telling state of affairs.

Paul Kimball

WTF

Words fail me.

Watch this.

Paul Kimball