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"The whole UFO thing is a kind of meme," says Susan Blackmore, a psychologist who studies paranormal activity. "It's a craze, a bit like sudoku. UFOs were just a rather long-lived version. But crazes thrive on novelty, and eventually that dies out. It's taken a long time, but it's good that the UFO era is over. My prediction is that it will go away for a long time and then come back." [...]

Susan Blackmore is like Seth Shostack of SETI ; they both freely admit that they have never studied any of the relevant and inexplicable UFO cases, and yet, they shamelessly line up to be the 'expert' talking heads whenever a brain dead journalist like Stephen Moss is tasked with writing around this subject.

The reason why there has been a spate of articles could be that we are in the annual 'silly season' the crisis that newspapers face every year where there are no stories pouring in from PR companies since they are all away on holiday.

The other reason could be that we are in the middle of a 'flap' up north where people are getting footage and photographs that are hard to explain.

One thing is for certain. If only one instance of an extraterrestrial UFO is true, then ETs exist, and Blackmore is humiliated and Shostack is out of a job. Anyone taking the time to read NUFORC will be aware of the constant flow of very bizarre, inexplicable sightings of the higest quality, right up to last month.

Susan Blackmore is an interesting example of a deluded and dishonest 'scientist'. She has written a book on 'memes' (which is why she is always putting everything she says in that context, to sell her book) and asserts whenever she is put on television as an expert in things she admits to never having studied, that it can all be put down to these 'memes' which she asserts, without any evidence at all, both exist and which might even be alive in some way.

No one ever pulls her up on these absurd claims, even worse, no one challenges her suitability as a talking head for this subject. In the age of google, it is impossible to say that she is the only one that could be found to chime in on this subject....unless there is an agenda in the writing of this piece. But thats impossible, right? Especially with the Guardian, which is a quality newspaper for intelligent people....

SETI, whilst being a totally illogical waste of time and energy, is harmless in itself. Whoever wants to work at it is free to do so, just like the Alchemists used to ferret away in the dark trying to turn lead into gold. What is odd, perplexing, and rather suspicious is why Seth Shostack, the spokesman for that endeavour says anything at all about UFOs. He refuses to read any of the cases, and instead, consistenly uses ridicule, lies and his own supersitition to prop up his 'position', which is, "I have a gig. I put my life into it. Dont rain on my parade". The dogma they repeat and refuse to address has been challenged clearly, and actually, from non intrenched camps, you can begin to hear the rumblings of the form 'hey wait a minute' from many true scientists who are beginning to understand that there is something to the UFO problem, and that there is only one inescapable conslusion to the cases that are of interest to us.

The French are way ahead in this 'putting away of childish things', which sadly, The Guardian perpetually chooses not to do.

The COMETA report, which is available in English if you know how to google, is a report written by:

High-level officials - including retired generals from the French Institute of Higher Studies for National Defense, a government-financed strategic planning agency - recently took a giant step in openly challenging skepticism about UFOs.

In a report based on a three-year study, they concluded that ''numerous manifestations observed by reliable witnesses could be the work of craft of extraterrestrial origin'' and that, in fact, the best explanation is ''the extraterrestrial hypothesis.'' Although not categorically proven, ''strong presumptions exist in its favor and if it is correct, it is loaded with significant consequences.''

The French group reached that conclusion after examining nearly 500 international aeronautical sightings and radar/ visual cases, and previously undisclosed pilots' reports. They drew on data from official sources, government authorities, and the air forces of other countries. The findings are contained in a 90-page report titled ''UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For?''

Any serious journalist that is computer literate (do I need to say it, regular readers of BLOGDIAL?) should have found and read this document, instead of going down their in-house list of "talking heads to contact by subject". On a purely selfish level, most journalists want to write articles that are popular and read by alot of people. If Mr Moss had simply re-puslished the COMETA report ver batim, it would have been devoured by readers all over the world, becauese there really has not been a widespread exposure of this shockingly frank report in the English speaking world.

It would have been timely, since some editor obviously asked him to write in response to the binoculoids scanning the skies in North Yorkshire. So, why go down the route of the dullard, the lowest common denominator, the idiot? It's so very boring.

The COMETA report is hair raising stuff, because it is as close to a public government admission that UFOs are ET spacecraft as has ever been made. It is frank, balanced, pulls no punches, considers everything, leaves out nothing. It is breathtaking, literally.

It shows categorically that when serious professional people (Shostack and Blackmore are not serious or objective by any measure) look at the strong UFO evidence, they come to one inescapable conclusion, and they also say, almost uniformly, that this problem needs to be studied, the absurd and illogical ridicule associated with the subject, which (rightly) puts off scientists from studying it needs to be countered so that we can...do somehing about this, instead of letting it carry on unobserved and un recorded.

Finally, did you know that until very recently scientists didn't believe that meteors came from space? Seems absurd doesn't it, and this relates directly to the present UFO problem; an ongoing sporadic event that cannot be repeated in the lab, witnissed by tens of thousands of credible witnesses, that is definately real, photographed and filmed but which is not accepted simply because it is not part of the current scientific dogma:

HISTORY OF METEOR SHOWER OBSERVATION

Chinese, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman records of meteor showers date back about 3000 years. The most ancient records of meteor showers show that people interpreted the showers as magical or religious events. Ancient Greeks and Romans thought meteor showers were weather-related, like lightning and rain. During the 18th century many scientists, including American astronomer David Rittenhouse, began to favor the idea that meteor showers had their origin in space.

Many scientists still believed that meteors were weather-related or caused by some phenomenon on the earth and did not accept that meteors came from space until the Leonid meteor storm in 1833. In that storm, observers noticed that the meteors all seemed to come from one place in the sky. This is an effect of perspective, but proved that the meteors originated beyond the earth’s atmosphere.

American astronomer Charles P. Olivier and British astronomer William F. Denning helped pioneer modern visual scientific studies of meteor showers in the beginning of the 20th century. American astronomer William Lewis Elkin obtained the first photographs of meteors during the Perseid and Leonid showers in the first years of the 20th century. British astronomers James Stanley Hey and G. S. Stewart studied meteor showers with radar. They projected radio waves into the sky during a meteor shower and recorded the radio waves as they bounced back from the meteors. The results of radar observations of meteor showers are very similar to the results of visual observation. [...]
Googled

There are plenty of places on the web where you can read about this, which seems to us now to be an absurd ostrich posture from people who should have known better, given the great advances they had been making and hence the clearly dangerous nature of word 'impossible' when applied to what is true and doable in the world. They are stil around today, these ostriches, and the most vocal of them are Seth Shostack and Susan Blackmore, aided and abetted by thier lazy brain dead supporters like The Guardian.

David 'The Hof' Hasselhof

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UFO-spotters give up hunt for flying saucers

By Ian Herbert, North of England Correspondent

Published: 10 August 2005