UFOs, Moby Dick, and Quantum Theory

Herman Melville’s masterpiece, Moby Dick, is an excoriation of God, with a prescient intuition about quantum mechanics.

Melville’s premise that God is Evil, is “footnoted” by the subtle suggestion that those who give credence to God -- pray to Him/It – get His/Its attention and bring catastrophe down upon them.



Their “observation” interacts with God and draws Him/It to behave intimately with the observer, often malevolently (as was the case with Captain Ahab), sometimes benevolently (but such instances of benevolence are rare).

Melville’s literary tenet and insight ends with the maxim that to survive whole and intact in this life one should take a benign attitude when it comes to God (Moby Dick): Ishmael.

The quantum intution is about how observation of events (measurement of them) affects the outcome – the reality – of those events. (Schrodinger’s cat is the theoretical example.)


Lithograph by Jie Qi, 2007

Now, since brilliant UFO mavens, such as Bruce Duensing who visits here, and a few others, think that UFOs are affected by our observation of the things, one can intersect Melville’s view with the ongoing and historical observation of flying saucers and/or UFOs.

The difference is that UFOs are not God – nor even a manifestation of God – and observing them hasn’t brought dire consequences down upon observers, generally.



But observation/measurement of UFOs has, according to devotees of the quantum effect, caused them to behave in ways they are irrational, much as quantum artifacts behave irrationally when observed/measured.

I, personally, don’t think UFOs are metaphorical quantum artifacts. And I think that while observing them in he past may have had an effect upon them, what they do or how they appear now indicates that observation of UFOs has no bearing upon them.

UFOs have become benign, ineffective, and without obvious purpose or intent; they operate like God before Ahab paid attention to Him/It.



Melville’s God is dead, and so are UFOs, as they once were in their reported incarnation(s).

RR

Old UFOs vs New UFOs

Earlier here we’ve posted a view about the evolution of UFOs.

But there seems to be a rather abrupt change in how the phenomenon appears to observers.

During older periods with “historical” references to UFOs, the things either took persons up in the heavens (Enoch, Elijah), inter-acted with humans (Ezekiel), or fought in the skies (the vimanas of ancient India, the Basel, Switzerland battle of 1566).









While there is a lacuna of sorts after that Basel sighting, UFOs appeared as mysterious dirigible-like airships in the 1890s, with sporadic sightings of disk-shaped “craft” up to the 1950s, when UFOs or flying saucers were almost ubiquitous.





See this paper about the 1954 UFO wave – a PDF.

Saucers were debarking creatures:



Saucers were, allegedly, shooting ray guns at observers and abducting them or giving them rides into outer space:



Saucers were skirting the airways of Earth with pronounced chutzpah:



Then a UFO drought began, in the late 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, until today when UFOs appear as triangular or rectangular craft, never descending to the ground, never exuding beings or creatures of any kind, and never coming into proximity with humans.



What has happened to the phenomenon? Why the alterations in appearance and behavior?

UFO Conspiracies

A paper on the [UFO] conspiracy mind-set -- a PDF

A New Ufology?

Click here for an interesting take on a movement to create a new ufology

Paul Kimball's state of mind...

We consider Paul Kimball a friend, and we follow his blog and Facebook musings regularly.

Lately he has been absorbed by what he sees as synchronicity-like happenings that afflict him.

We think he and his followers might like to see an alternative view.

Click here for a precis on Apophenia

The Paranormal Priority: UFOs?

For those bewildered by or obsessed with things at the fringe of reality, do such things as Sasquatch/Bigfoot/Yeti matter, or Nessie and Champ, or chupacabras, or ghosts?



Why do UFOs have more import, in our estimation, than those other “entities” listed above?

UFOs have a longevity that the listed items do not have.

What UFOs are or may be seem to have more importance in the great scheme of things.

UFOs have paranormal cachet that Bigfoot doesn’t, and certainly more than chupacabras have.



Even “ghosts” don’t impact observers in the same way that UFOs do.



And the Loch Ness monster or Lake Champlain’s Champ don’t provide any great ripples in the paranormal panoply.

UFOs have a cosmological underpinning or a metaphysical ambiance of some kind, deservedly or not.

If UFOs are extraterrestrial in origination, that is very important, for all the obvious reasons: what’s the ET culture? The intelligence? The theology? Et cetera.



If UFOs are an example of someone or something playing with the evolution or mind of mankind, that too is very important. (Need we tell you why?)



If UFOs are merely the fallout of secret military aircraft testings, that isn’t too important but it would quell the ongoing mystery assuredly.



UFOs may be observational trickery or real substantive craft, which is what we believe them to be.

Either way, they present a phenomenon that ranks up there with some of the best mysteries of history and time, like who really parted the Red Sea, or did Jesus really rise up after his crucifixion (and if so, why), or what caused Hitler’s megalomania, or does the Universe have a edge, or can we travel back or forward in time.



As a matter of fancy, UFOs may have something to do with time-travel, whereas Bigfoot doesn’t, nor Nessie, nor those other elements of the imagination.

UFOs get a priority because at the heart of the phenomenon lies a meaningful essence, it seems to us.

Time spent on the other paranormal or Fortean elements is just a waste of time, thought, and effort.

UFOs go to the top of our list of mysteries but do not replace more important issues, such as man’s inhumanity to man, or is God truly dead?



The pursuit of UFOs is, after all, only a hobby of sorts……

Who or What?

Underlying the whole discussion about UFOs lies the question of who or what promulgates the phenomenon.

A premise needs to be established, and a paper entitled Who or What Built the Universe? provides a premise that leads, or could, to a premise that should be created to address the UFO phenomenon.

Click here for a WORD document of the paper

Click here for a web-page version of the paper

UFO Abductions: The Explanations

Gerald Eberlein's paper on the UFO abduction phenomenon presents an academic take on alleged "kidnappings" by extraterrestrials.

Click here for the PDF

Life, death, life and UFOs: The witness failure(s)

The book, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience by Pim van Lommel, M.D. provides extensive data and information about the so-called near death phenomenon or the NDE (near-death experience).

The author covers virtually everything about NDEs, including an extensive account of Quantum Mechanics in relation to the experience.



Most of you have read or heard the accounts of persons who died and “came back.”

What I want to zero in on are a few of the descriptions that the dying or dead witnesses provide; namely, the beautiful music and beautiful flowers they experience, and how this relates to UFO reports, as they has been presented by persons who’ve experienced that phenomenon, also.

Every NDE account that Dr. Lommel provides from the literature and his own accumulated reports, from his practice or that of colleagues, tells of the dead/dying person’s hearing “beautiful music” [sic] and seeing “beautiful flowers” [sic] on their way to a blissful landscape after transitioning that tunnel with a light at the end of it.

But no one, and I mean no one, has reported exactly what kind of music or what kind of flowers they experienced.

Were the flowers gladiolas, petunias, roses, dandelions?



Was the music classical, operatic, chorale, jazz, rock, even hip-hop?



No one has ever provided a definitive account or identification of the music or flowers.

Did no musicologist, opera buff, composer, or musician have a NDE?

Did no horticulturist, avid gardener, or flower enthusiast ever have a NDE?

That is, why does no one provide an exact, precise descriptive of the music or flowers, if the experience is a real one and not a metaphor of the mind?

Now, this also applies to those who witness UFOs, in the sky or up close and personal.

Has ever an aeronautical engineer seen a UFO and can provide a description of the design that corresponds to his or her expertise as an engineer of aircraft?

Has ever a chemical engineer or metallurgist provided a description of the smell or patina of a UFO that has appeared near them?

Has a pilot ever – really – provided an actual account of what a UFO did in the context of its flight; that is, has anyone with flying acumen given an account that explains or shows the proclivities of flight by a UFO, in ways that indicate they actually took in the experience in a way that was or is real – Kenneth Arnold, Gorman, or Lt. Coyne, notwithstanding?



No UFO report by a witness of a UFO has ever provided a forensic description of what was seen or experienced; the details come after the fact by UFO investigators and/or “researchers.”

No UFO report has ever been definitive, in portraying what a UFO or flying saucer was constructed of in essence.

Yes, Scully gives details that resonate in his account of the Aztec crashed flying disks, but that’s second or third-hand information, and concocted as most UFO mavens think.

But no UFO witness, with credentials that count – engineering, chemical, aeronautical – has given a report that provides actuality – no one.

This means, on the face of it, that either NDE’s and UFOs are chimeras, or that witnesses to either are incompetent or without credentials that allow them to be professional in their reportage.

The Flying Saucer from Mars and CDA

Back in the day I thought that this book by “Cedric Allingham” corroborated the Adamski alien contacts and story:



Here are the Adamski-like photos that Allingham purportedly took of a flying saucer that allegedly came fro Mars:





But the story was a hoax, concocted, for some bizarre reason, by respected and credentialed British astronomer, Patrick Moore:



And who was the journalist who unmasked the hoaxer and the exposed the hoax? Our favorite skeptical thinker, Christopher Allen, known here and in the UFO community as CDA.

Click here for the story

CDA has cachet with us and with those who like clear thought, gentlemanly argumentation, and skepticism in its revered and best sense.

So when you read his comments here and elsewhere, take a moment to appreciate his bent of mind and research acumen.

The Robert Taylor 1979 UFO Encounter

On November 9th, 1979, Robert Taylor, a forester in Scotland, had a weird encounter with a strange “craft” in Dechmont Woods near Livingston, Scotland.

The incident is often referred to as the Livingston Incident or the Dechmont Woods Encounter and can be read about at UFO Casebook:

UFO Casebook

Or at Wikipedia:

Wikipedia

And here is a link to a YouTube video about the incident:

YouTube

What interests us, besides the nature of the alleged encounter, is that the described “craft” is highly reminiscent of a Hughes prototype for a lunar or Mars capsule to house astronauts:



And here is a graphic of another UFO sighting in Scotland:



And a representation of a Scotland event in 1964 (around the time of the Lonnie Zamora/Socorro sighting, which we think was a sighting of a Hughes lunar-landing prototype):



A CIA operative, Bosco Nedlelcovic, who communicated with us in the 1970s, told us that the CIA was engaged in staged flying saucer events – The Villas Boas case (as outlined in Nick Redfern’s book,Contactees, Chapter 20) and the infamous Scoriton incident in England (covered here in an earlier blog post).

We conjecture that the Robert Taylor episode was a CIA-staged event, using the Hughes prototypical craft, which was ensconced and tested in the British Isles in the 1960s/1970s time-frame.

Fate magazine’s account in 1980 outlines the event in a way that corroborates, we think, our Hughes/CIA view:

The Need for Metaphysics and Common Sense (in ufology)

In the preliminary stages of change in the study of UFOs, sparked by Paul Kimball, Nick Redfern, and us (among a few others: Moody, CDA, Gilles Fernandez, et al.) there has to be some quiding principles of and for thought.

Mr. Kimball, at his blog -- The Other Side of Truth -- is addressing some of the issues for the new ufology.

And, for our part, we keep the ball rolling with a paper by James Williams that provides an exegesis of Alfred North Whitehead's thoughts on common sense in Process and Realty.

The paper, for those with intellectual stamina, outlines how metaphysics and life can be enhanced by proper thinking and observation.

Click here for Willams' paper (a PDF)

Ufology, a term we hate and hope to see discarded in future, and the study of UFOs need a cataclysmic paradigm shift.

Kimball, Redfern, and the skeptics, Moody, Christopher Allen, Fernandez, along with our small part are at the forefront, we hope, of a major change in how UFOs are discussed, studied, commented on, and viewed by media, academe, science, and the public.

This posting is a small step in that direction.

The Morpheus/Socorro Lander

This insignia is an evolved symbol, just as the Morpheus Lander is an evolved Lunar Lander, derived from the initial Hughes Aircraft designed lander that accounts for, in our estimation, the Zamora sighting in Socorro in 1964.

Morpehus is on Facebook -- click here


The "official web-site may be found by clicking here

We'll have much more about this upcoming....

The Socorro Lander/UFO?

Jeff Ritzmann of Paratopia found this image at boingboing.net.

It reminded him, and now me, of Zamora's UFO.

Note the insignia on the left, back side....

A Socorro Confusion (that flummoxes researchers)

This symbol is ostensibly the “insignia” that Lonnie Zamora saw and drew (for the public) which was on the UFO craft he reportedly observed in Socorro, New Mexico in 1964:



This is the “actual” symbol seen by Zamora, according to Allen Hynek, Ray Sanford, and Air Force files – it has been duplicated by an observer of a later UFO sighting, as outlined below the image (here):



We’ve added the horizontal lines, to approximate what officer Zamora saw and drew, but which was kept secret, supposedly to prevent hoaxers from using it for mischief.

The symbol/insignia that Zamora provided, and seen in 1973 by Gary Chopic on a triangular UFO, was an insignia used to identify a U.S. military prototype we believe, and confirms, for us, that Zamora’s UFO was a test vehicle of Earth manufacture in 1964.

Keeping Zamora’s original, true drawing sub rosa has prevented UFO researchers from reaching the same conclusion, and has allowed the false assumption by UFO mavens (Jerry Clark, for example) that Socorro is one of the best UFO sightings on record.

This subterfuge is part and parcel of the UFO story: persons and agencies holding back information and details that could clarify and even explain, perhaps, what UFO are.

Why does the government becloud UFO sightings and information? One can guess.

Why do UFO researchers becloud UFO material? To adopt a façade of illuminated secrecy and alchemical-like mystery. But that practice has only made the study of UFOs more daunting and difficult for those who would like to use scientific-like methodology and/or forensics to get at the UFO enigma.

For us this means that older, classic UFO sightings have to be re-examined or scrapped, and new sightings pursued without all the convoluted clutter and devious detritus that has accreted to UFO sightings of the past (by flawed “ufologists”).

We hope you agree….

Not exactly rats, but...

UFO mavens are abandoning, in droves, UFO UpDates, that slovenly hovel where UFO geezers and close-minded. fascistic-like UFO aficionados have congregated for years, to hawk their mind-numbing hypotheses about flying saucers while stifling open discussion and intelligence.

A foul-stenching clique has arisen at UpDates, containing such one time UFO luminaries at Jerome Clark, Don Ledger, Bruce Maccabee, Kentaro Mori, among others.

But those luminary-lights have dimmed considerably in recent years, and what we’ve noted for some time now, about the UpDate list-master, Errol Bruce-Knapp and his minions, has finally come to awareness by slow-to-get-the-message UFO hobbyists.

Our friend Paul Kimball, at his blog – The Other Side of Truth – has relieved himself, once again, of UpDate visitations, because of how Bruce-Knapp closed the door on Carol Rainey, whose excoriation of Budd Hopkins’ abduction methodology brought opprobrium in spades, to Hopkins, Ms. Rainey herself, and advocates on both sides.

You can see Mr. Kimball’s rejoinder and reasons for abandoning UpDates about this matter by clicking here.

Brit UFO researcher and folklore expert David Clarke left UpDates several months ago, after suffering megalomaniacal attacks by Jerry Clark, who uses UpDates to showcase his past UFO acumen and lost-stature as a bona fide UFO writer/researcher.

Others have left because they were held at bay or bludgeoned by the likes of Bruce-Knapp’s lapdogs whom we know, first hand, to be a truth-bending, sociopathic personalities, jealous of thinkers who capture the UFO audience, while they lie fallow in the muck of their disgusting mind-sets and hatred of the truths that they pervert.

At any rate, UpDates is in its final decline, and will be out of business by the end of 2011.

We’ve told you so, and now persons with more street cred than us are doing so also.

Frankenstein's Monster and Roswell

Christopher Allen [CDA], a Roswell skeptic and the story’s most intellectual debunker, often points out that Roswell was dead almost immediately after it came to light in 1947.

And he’s right, of course.

The headline(s), touting a captured flying disk, moved from the front pages of newspapers to those newspapers’ morgues, within hours of the original outing.

Roswell’s flying saucer incident remained moribund for thirty years, until it was resurrected by a few opportunistic writers and UFO “researchers” – including Stanton Friedman, Charles Berlitz, William Moore, Kevin Randle, and a few others.

The story was dead until those mad men raised it from the grave in the late 1970s.

And ever since, the original story has been accreted or enhanced by a slew of UFO mavens, among them David Rudiak, a full-blown Roswell extraterrestrial supporter/believer.

Christopher Allen’s scenario of a dead story brought to life by men with an agenda to “prove” extraterrestrial visitors crashed near Roswell reminds this writer of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s gothic tale Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus.



In the Shelley story, as you know, a body is created by Dr. Frankenstein putting together a creature from dead body parts, some human, some not.

Frankenstein comes to loathe his creation, just as some UFO investigators [Kevin Randle?] have come to loathe their initial Roswell ET support.

But the creature – Roswell – lives on imbued with a life that isn’t easily snuffed out, no matter how hard intelligent people like CDA try to kill it.

The Roswell creature is composed of all kinds of mouldering additions, each with a history and one-time life, but none salient as a living, true experience, only alive now because of their creative addition to a form that was dead but is now alive by alchemical-like machinations.

Killing Roswell is as daunting as it is in the original story and every film or story that has followed Ms. Shelley’s 1818 tale.

Real Contactees?

A man, Wilbur J Wilkinson, provided this script, claiming it was from a race using the moon as a way-station for its people from the planet Maser.:



Here’s the almost unknown story as recounted by Jerome Clark in one of his books:

Hunrath and Wilkinson account

In the script above, nothing registers, except the word Enlil, which represents, in Sumerian “theology” the Lord of the Air and Lord of the Command (whose mother was Ki).

Yes, the story is goofy on the face of it, but the disappearance of the two men, like the mysterious disappearance of pilot Fredrick Valentich, is intriguing.

Valentich YouTube video

The contactee stories, while mostly fictional, should not be dismissed out of hand.

There may be a truth or a reality inside them, somewhere….