Rozzy - Commemorative Swag

You know, I've decided that the time has come to embrace Roswell Slides mania, in my own unique way. Why fight the tide of human history?

In that spirit, I encourage everyone to venture to my on-line store and pick up your some of the commemorative Roswell Slides swag that I have created, featuring our favourite alleged space alien, along with the slogan I came up with: "The Roswell Slides - It's a Mummy, Dummy!" All of the proceeds will be going to my favourite charity - me!!

Buy early, and buy often!

Paul Kimball

Adam Dew... Wrong Again!

"Roswell slides" promoter Adam Dew. Photo by Robert Sheaffer.

Roswell slides promoter Adam Dew has been doing a fair bit of media lately to gin up interest and sales for the May 5th reveal event of the slides in Mexico City, hosted by paranormal con promoter Jaime Maussan, and along the way he has made a number of statements that are simply wrong. For example, he identified the military "witness" to the dead alien as a Lieutenant in his film trailer when in fact he was a Private First Class, Eleazar Benavides.

Another egregious example can be seen in Dew's oft-repeated statement that nothing in pop culture looked like the small bodied big-headed alien prior to 1947. In a recent interview with Open Minds, Dew states, "People in the late 40s were not staging aliens, as far as I can tell. That image of the big head and skinny body didn’t become popular in pop culture until the 60s. So we know that it is not a fake staged alien, as far as I can tell.”

This is Dew responding to a straw man of his own creation. Nobody is suggesting that the bodies depicted in the slides were faked in 1947. Therefore, his argument is irrelevant. Making matters worse, however, is that it is also incorrect. In fact, big-headed small-bodied strange creatures were indeed a staple of science fiction and pop culture well before 1947. If someone had wanted to fake an alien body in 1947, they could have easily drawn upon this meme.

As just a couple of examples, here are two covers from the popular pulp magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories, both from the 1930s, and both featuring alien creatures with big heads and much smaller bodies.

Thrilling Wonder Stories, Vol. 8, No. 1, August 1936

Thrilling Wonder Stories, Vol. 13, No. 3, June 1939

There are plenty of other examples for anyone willing to look. Here are two from 1940.

Thrilling Wonder Stories, March 1940

Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1940

Again, this is all an irrelevant sideshow to the basic question of whether the slides were hoaxed or not, because when people talk of a con or hoax they are invariably referring to either someone who created the slides much later than 1947, a la the "alien autopsy" film of Ray Santilli, or of someone who has used actual slides of a mummy-like human figure that may have been taken around the late 1940s and represented them as space aliens today. But Dew and his fellow slides promoters want you to focus on the straw man suggestion that what skeptics are saying when they talk of a hoax is that someone hoaxed them in 1947, which is not the case at all. However, even if it was what skeptics were suggesting, then it is clear that Dew is wrong in his assertion that there was nothing in pop culture that a hoaxer in 1947 could have drawn upon to come up with such a hoax.

In short, even when Dew is making irrelevant arguments, they seem to have a tendency to be flat-out wrong. The only question people are left to determine is whether this is the result of incompetence, or dishonesty. Given the crowd with which Dew has chosen to associate himself, either option is plausible.

Paul Kimball

Dr. John Mack - Alien Reality and Humanity

From my video vault - John Mack speaking at the 2001 MUFON Symposium press conference about the media and UFOs, and anthropocentric humanism and how an alien reality would change the way we view ourselves, and the society that we have created. Stan Friedman makes a cameo appearance at the end. 

 Paul Kimball

Intelligent Control?

Apropos of a comment thread at the UFO Iconoclasts blog (here) about UFOs being intelligently controlled, I have a question for UFOs-as-ET believers - name one case where there is incontrovertible evidence, i.e. beyond any reasonable doubt, of intelligent control of a UFO. Cite the evidence that proves it (and something like the Twining Memo is not evidence of intelligent control - it's merely evidence that someone once wrote a memo wherein they stated a preliminary opinion in the early days of UFO reporting that they believed some UFOs were intelligently controlled, which is an entirely different thing). I'm genuinely curious, because I can't think of one.

Paul Kimball

The Tasteless Aesthetic of Ufology

We live in a world where, for better or worse, appearance matters. 

When a person shows up for a job interview, for example, they're better off wearing a business suit, or at the very least something neat and presentable, than a t-shirt with mustard stains on it and a pair of dirty sweat pants. 

Ufologists have never really understood this simple truth. Case in point - Frank Warren's website, The UFO Chronicles, which aggregates various news and opinion items about UFOs.

The design is the equivalent of the t-shirt and sweat pants I mentioned above. 

People in my business like to say that "content is king," and in the end they're right... but that only applies if your content is presented in a way that is aesthetically appealing. A website is like a job interview - if people are turned off by your appearance on first sight, nothing you say or do after that is really going to matter because most of them will have already turned the proverbial channel.

I find it most amusing that people who desperately want the mainstream to take them seriously have created an on-line presence that virtually guarantees that nobody outside their core fanbase will take them seriously. It's almost as if someone approached them and said, a la the infamous Robertson Panel, "hey, buddy, design a website that will make UFOs look as goofy as possible," and Warren and his fellow travelers said, "sounds good!" 

Memo to ufologists: style and substance aren't mutually exclusive.

If space aliens ever saw the way that ufology presents itself they would be appalled. Then again, I think it's safe to say that's true for most things having to do with ufology.

Paul Kimball

Space Aliens

From the on-line comic site Poorly Drawn Lines.

I chose grad school... but I always thought enslaving a lesser species would have been a good choice too.

Paul Kimball