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Flying Saucers and Other Fairy Tales
NYT ^ | 12/23/2017 | Ross Douthat

Posted on 12/25/2017 7:36:27 PM PST by BenLurkin

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To: Telepathic Intruder

>>Then again, I’ve seen a UFO myself, I just don’t know what it was.

This week a flying object was observed from Phoenix LA, and elsewhere.

It was a Space-X launch and not “covert” but it did look strange and it was a flying object (just not identified by some observers).


41 posted on 12/26/2017 1:55:20 AM PST by a fool in paradise (Did Barack Obama denounce Communism and dictatorships when he visited Cuba as a puppet of the State?)
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To: null and void

>>Earth has no resources that you can’t find more abundantly somewhere else.

>Chocolate. Coffee. Cocaine. Kudzu...

Kashmere, Kardashians, Vuzuvulas


42 posted on 12/26/2017 2:01:36 AM PST by a fool in paradise (Did Barack Obama denounce Communism and dictatorships when he visited Cuba as a puppet of the State?)
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To: himno hero

If humans were the trash species of the universe, the others would’ve simply crush the pest as we would cockroaches.


43 posted on 12/26/2017 2:05:14 AM PST by a fool in paradise (Did Barack Obama denounce Communism and dictatorships when he visited Cuba as a puppet of the State?)
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To: douginthearmy

>>I know it sounds totally far fetched, but as crazy as that sounds it is much much much more likely than interstellar travel.

With all of the people monitoring the approach of asteroids and such and the orbits of satellites (and space junk), it’s doubtful that spacecraft from interstellar travel could be passing into our atmosphere unnoticed these days.


44 posted on 12/26/2017 2:07:37 AM PST by a fool in paradise (Did Barack Obama denounce Communism and dictatorships when he visited Cuba as a puppet of the State?)
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To: a fool in paradise
"It was a Space-X launch"

No longer unidentified, then. But there are a few things that just cannot be explained by anyone. I put those in the category of "Weird things happen. If we knew everything, they wouldn't be weird. We don't".
45 posted on 12/26/2017 2:13:40 AM PST by Telepathic Intruder
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To: The Duke
What do civilized people do when barbarians move into their neighborhoods? They move elsewhere and keep their distance.

Agreed.

Next up--AI becomes self-aware and adopts the same tactics.

We are the cows you see when you drive down a country road...no clue about what is going on but a lot of mooing....
46 posted on 12/26/2017 3:13:52 AM PST by cgbg (Hidden behind the social justice warrior mask is corruption and sexual deviance.)
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To: Telepathic Intruder

I find it hard to believe that some civilization would cross 100 trillion or so miles ...

For the same reason you ancestors moved out of Africa, out of Europe, away from the East Coast of the US - a people tend to spread out over time. The putative aliens did not simply hop in a ship and zoom a trillion miles to kill a cow, but got here because they already had arrived at other nearby star systems. A Centuri is only 4 light years away; and you can be sure they do not use chemical rockets.

They explore and expand because that’s what life does. Given hundreds or millions of years, a successful space faring species could literally go anywhere for hosts of reasons.

I’ve seen several - one the classical shape submerging into the ocean, the other so big it covered both sides of the tree line on the road I was driving on - then vanished before I could see it all.


47 posted on 12/26/2017 3:39:22 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: The Duke

I find it difficult to believe that interstellar aliens with massive spacecraft can overcome the barriers of time and space.

I’m sure our relatives back before the dawn of the 20th century would find it difficult to believe that humans could make massive pieces of metal fly, overcoming the barriers of time and space ...


48 posted on 12/26/2017 3:43:13 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: cpdiii
Relative to a civilization that can cross interstellar distances and observe us, we would be just curious bugs for them to look at and study. I hope they like bugs.

They would either have some form of a robust environmental ethic, or not. Either way, it's difficult to imagine they would want anything from us. It's also difficult to imagine that they would see us as a threat.

High technology and exploration would seem to imply curiosity, so observation and non-interference is a realistic possibility, assuming that faster than light travel is possible (big assumption), and assuming that intelligent aliens exist at all (big assumption).

If I had to guess today, I'd guess that faster than light travel will never be anything more than a convention of science fiction and that we therefore will never really have a definitive answer about the existence of intelligent life somewhere other than earth.

49 posted on 12/26/2017 4:28:02 AM PST by sphinx
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To: Telepathic Intruder

IFO.

Still an UNUSUAL flying object.

There have been sighted objects that were government tests without disclosure or acknowledgement.


50 posted on 12/26/2017 4:58:42 AM PST by a fool in paradise (Did Barack Obama denounce Communism and dictatorships when he visited Cuba as a puppet of the State?)
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To: BenLurkin

I put UFOs in the same category as Bigfoot.

I see no conclusive, indisputable proof of either, but there are just TOO MANY sightings and encounters to completely dismiss them all as hokum. Figure about half of those sightings and photos are deliberate fakes, done by a couple of guys for a laugh, and that still leaves too many to discount.

So, my official stance is that I just don’t know.


51 posted on 12/26/2017 5:34:28 AM PST by DNME (The only solution to a BAD guy with a gun is a GOOD guy with a gun.)
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To: BenLurkin

Why is it that these self-proclaimed geniuses at the NY Times can’t figure out that in all the worlds in space, there may be a civilization that exists and may be smarter than we are (which wouldn’t take much), and they are looking around. And if I saw war, destruction, pain, killing, and torture happening, would I want to say “howdy?”

We don’t communicate with the ants. We just leave them alone of put them in ant farms. Why should they? They can wait till we grow up.

rwood


52 posted on 12/26/2017 6:15:20 AM PST by Redwood71
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To: BenLurkin

Military satellite that view the world often see fast moving objects that change direction beyond our capabilities.


53 posted on 12/26/2017 7:25:16 AM PST by CodeToad (CWII is coming. Arm Up! They Are!)
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To: Telepathic Intruder
People who claim to have been medically examined by ETs sometimes come away with an explanation or two. One is that the ET civilization is so old that they are suffering from inbreeding. They go on to say that we are genetically related to the ET, so that our DNA is being harvested in an attempt to restore normalcy to the ET DNA.

Other abductees report that we are a creation of the ET, and that they keep tabs on us in order to steer our evolution. Cow DNA can be used to splice human DNA from time to time. Recall that we can get nutrition from a cow in several ways and that cow tissue is used for medical research of our own.

There are many reported reasons why ET has an interest in us; and most sound at least remotely plausible. If you dig into the UFO lore you might be surprised what you find. I've been at it for thirty years, but not so much recently. There are some very interesting things regarding this issue.

Dr. Vallée concluded that the "high weirdness" of UFO encounters leads him to believe that the phenomenon is probably more spiritual than physical.

54 posted on 12/26/2017 8:15:06 AM PST by GingisK
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To: GingisK
the phenomenon is probably more spiritual a symptom of psychological problems than physical.
55 posted on 12/26/2017 8:17:28 AM PST by MD Expat in PA
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To: The Duke
I find it difficult to believe that interstellar aliens with massive spacecraft can overcome the barriers of time and space.

Our working technology is actually only 150 years old. Prior to the mid 1800s, scientists dabbled with a number of things, yet loads were all pulled by horses. Great theoretical advancements started happening in the 1600s; however, practical applications began in 1845 with the telegraph. Electronics came to be only in the very late 1880s, but long-wave radio was not commercially on a large scale until the 1920s.

So, what we know is "young". I just cannot bring myself to hear the accounts of thousands of credible witnesses and dismiss them out of hand just because those objects defy the physics WE know. That would be snobbish at the least. The folks of Micronesia didn't know how our airplanes worked when they spotted them during WWII; but, they didn't assume them to be imaginary, either.

56 posted on 12/26/2017 8:28:07 AM PST by GingisK
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To: onedoug

Is that you, Billy?


57 posted on 12/26/2017 8:31:13 AM PST by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: Telepathic Intruder

Imagine what our neighbors think of us. We are a cruel species that does terrible things to our own kind. Then we develop nuclear weapons and become space faring. That is a sure recipe for attracting attention, don’t you think?


58 posted on 12/26/2017 8:31:48 AM PST by GingisK
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To: DNME
Government documents introduce another acronym: IAC. It stands for "Identified Alien Contact".

There is a document that you can download from the NSA public website titled "Keys to the Extraterrestrial Messages". SETI recorded thirty separate messages which the NSA has partially decoded. The first one appears to a Periodic Table of the Elements. It seems that the NSA believes that ET exists.

59 posted on 12/26/2017 8:40:44 AM PST by GingisK
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To: Telepathic Intruder
“what could they possibly want?”

Souls. And they don't need to cross interstellar space. They've been here from the very start.

60 posted on 12/26/2017 8:47:14 AM PST by Sirius Lee (In God We Trust, In Trump We MAGA)
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