"Flying Saucers," revisited
Jun. 22nd, 2025 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

https://peakd.com/news/@arraymedia/ufos-investigation-reveals-area-51-myths-serve-as-cover-for-military-experiments
The reason this amused me, of course, is that I published a book in 2009 pointing this out. Of course the Wall Street Journal didn't mention that fact, but The UFO Phenomenon -- republished in 2020 as The UFO Chronicles -- made this same point with quite a bit of evidence. Once again, an idea I put into circulation seems to be circling slowly inward, on its way to general acceptance. It's an interesting testimony to the power of the fringes, and the mere fact that it doesn't have my name attached to it is hardly an issue.
One thing that the Wall Street Journal didn't discuss -- no surprises here -- is that not all strange things seen in the sky come out of Lockheed's "Skunk Works" or the other factories churning out classified military technology. This doesn't mean that some of them come from other worlds; there are very good reasons to think that interstellar travel isn't an option for intelligent species, including hard limits on how much energy any actual (as opposed to imaginary) species will ever have to hand. It remains the case that some UFO-related encounters have weird parallels in ancient folklore and shamanic experience, and others seem to relate to anomalous natural phenomena not yet understood by our scientists. It'll be interesting to see if the Wall Street Journal ever gets around to talking about those.
Klaatu - great band
Date: 2025-06-22 08:33 pm (UTC)The Carpenters came out with a cover of "Calling Occupants" that got more radio play, and Klaatu didn't have another big hit or album with their four follow up efforts. FWIW, I'm a fan of "Routine Day" and "December Dream", as well as "Subrosa Subway".
As for extraterrestrials, physics as we understand it and the vastness of space certainly makes it doubtful they've arrived, but if they ever do show up I hope they're friendly....