May 28, 2019--Flying Saucers

Unable to sleep I tuned into my favorite middle-of-the-night radio show, "Coast to Coast," where talk about the paranormal is the norm and flying saucers are the prime topic of conversation.

It's a low key program and boring enough to help induce sleep; but the other night the host, guest (a UFO expert), and the listeners who called in were all unusually excited.

It seems that the Navy, as reported by the New York Times, recently issued new classified guidance for how Navy pilots are to report what the military refers to as "unexplained aerial phenomena," UAPs, or "unidentified flying objects," UFOs.

These guidelines were necessary, the Navy revealed, because in recent years there has been an increase in the number of credible reports about Navy pilots encountering unusual aircraft or otherwise unexplainable flying objects.

The excitement on "Coast to Coast" was because the Navy by developing the guidelines and the paper of record reporting about them offered validation and legitimacy for those who believe in the reality of extraterrestrial spaceships visiting Earth. This suggests that those who for decades have paid attention to reports about UFOs are not all kooks and wing-nuts but rather may be on to something.

True, half the people who call in to "Coast to Coast" share stories about being abducted by space aliens, not just that they believe the evidence that UFOs exist; but with the Navy releasing videotape of close encounters and the Times' Pentagon correspondent the author of the front-page story, it may be possible that there have been abductions.

Who knows? Who really knows?

So it's time for me to confess that I'm a UFO nut. 

Back in 1953 I came across Desmond Leslie's and George Adamski's Flying Saucers Have Landed and it stirred my adolescent imagination.

I took to watching the night sky over Brooklyn, hoping to spot a UFO and maybe, if I were lucky, I would be abducted and transported to a place more interesting than East Flatbush.

But at most all I ever spotted was a bright light in the sky perhaps over Coney Island that seemed to hover and than, at supersonic speed, turn an abrupt right, and disappear from sight over New Jersey.

But than again, as I said, I was a very undeveloped 13-year-old with little prospect of ever living in a larger world, much less one that spanned the galaxy. But I did know enough that I didn't want to be abducted to New Jersey much less Venus, where Leslie and Adamski claimed most UFOs were based.

One good thing about spending the season in Maine is that the night sky is very dark and it's thus a good place for witnessing the Aurora Borealis and spotting flying saucers. 

August 8, 2017--The Believing Brain

Some of us the other morning were talking about the speech Donald Trump gave last week at a campaign-style rally in West Virginia.

He trotted out his best red-meat one-liners, including how everything going wrong in America is Hillary Clinton's fault. He also took undeserved credit for the run-up of the stock market. Then, he didn't fail to mention that he won the election by "the biggest" margin in American history. This in spite of the fact that Hillary received about 3.0 million more popular votes than he. And he didn't stifle the "lock-her-up" chants. It was like September 2016 all over again.

Ed wondered, "How can he get 20, 30 thousand people to turn out for this silliness?"

"And," Rona said, "to be able to get away with the lie that he won in a landslide?"

I said, and by doing so stirred the pot, "In the spirit of fairness, how does Bernie Sanders still attract tens of thousands to his rallies where his very-educated followers let him get away with proposing policies like free colleges tuition even though anyone having taken Economics 101 knows his numbers don't add up?"

"I'm not fond of the comparison," Ed said, "But I get your point." He is politically progressive but not an ideologue.

"I am coming to conclude," I said, "that it's all about belief. How people are substantially hardwired to believe. To believe myths and religious teaching, ideologies, the supernatural, the paranormal, conspiracy theories, fake news, and even flying saucers."

Ed said, "I've heard you opine about that late night radio talkshow you listen to, Coast to Coast, which is amazingly on more than 600 stations, where guest frequently talk about being abducted by space aliens."

"Again," I pushed, "it's not just the less well educated who have strong beliefs not based on facts or evidence. That's why it's interesting to read about how cognitive scientists, including neurologists, are coming to conclude that all humans have a built-in propensity to believe things that are not verifiable."

Rona said, "You're not talking about those who think there are anatomical differences in the brains of liberals and conservatives?"

"Not this time," I said, "I had done some reading about that last year but, though it was in its own way engaging, especially to liberals because it made us seem by nature smarter than conservatives, ultimately it wasn't persuasive. But I recently read Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain, and that marshaled a lot of credible evidence that is both biological and cultural."

"Sounds interesting," Ed said, "I should take a look at it."

"You can borrow my copy," I said, "But in the meantime, when I get home I'll send you a blurb about it and then you can decide if you want to read it."

When I got home I sent Ed the following from Shermer--

We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, personal, and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after forming our beliefs we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations. Beliefs come first, explanations follow. [My italics]  

Then from a review--

Dr. Shermer also provides the neuroscience behind our beliefs. The brain is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through our senses the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. The first process Dr. Shermer calls patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data. The second process he calls agenticity: the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency. 

We can't help believing. Our brains evolved to connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen. These meaningful patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which adds an emotional boost of further confidence in the beliefs and thereby accelerates the process of reinforcing them. Round and round the process goes in a positive feedback loop of belief confirmation. Dr. Shermer outlines the various cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths and to insure that we are always right. [Italics added]

The next time I saw Ed he asked if he could borrow the book.

August 5, 2016--Area 51 and the New World Order

And here I thought that Area 51 conspiracy theories were just about alien invasions and psychic phenomena. Little did I know until the night before last that the military's ultra-top-secret weapons development facility hidden away in the Nevada desert is also where the New World Order is taking shape.

The U.S. government will only fess up to using Area 51 to develop and test aircraft such as the U-2 spy plane and the F-117 stealth fighter.

They deny dabbling in ESP experiments or consorting with aliens who conspiracy theorists claim have been arriving in the area for years, decades, centuries, even millennia.

(The latter limited, of course, to those who believe in Evolution and the earth being more than 6,000 years old.)

I've learned about this by listening to late night talk radio. In recent years especially to George Noory, host of Coast to Coast AM, which for four hours every overnight is devote to things paranormal. I am not alone among insomniacs. His show is carried by over 600 radio stations and listened to by at least 2.75 million.

The other night, needing a break from listeners calling in to report about being abducted by aliens, I switched over to my other favorite late night show--Red Eye Radio, pitched to interstate truckers, shift workers, and fitful sleepers. I of the latter category.

It is broadcast over 38 stations and attracts a nightly audience of perhaps a million. It is political in nature, no flying-saucer people, and hosted by Eric Harley and Gary McNamara, two reasonably intelligent and well informed conservatives who are sane and smart enough to be troubled by Donald Trump's candidacy.

In the midst of their angst about Trump, a caller, perhaps like me straying from Coast to Coast, brought up Area 51. Harley and McNamara moaned, sensing where this was headed--they've heard it all--but, gentlemen that they are, didn't hang up on her. It was as if they were saying--"OK, bring it on. You just got back from Mars and . . ."

She surprised them. She didn't want to report about being teleported from Cleveland to Roswell, New Mexico--she wanted to talk about the quasi-governmental New World Order.

This I knew something about from my interest in Millennialism. The belief that the world is nearing the end and when that is signaled by the Rapture, after a millennium of Tribulation, Christ will reappear and during this Second Coming will sort out who are going to heaven and who are going in the other direction.

Symptoms of the End Times include the emergence of a New World Order (some say the UN or the current American government is its progenitor) and the appearance of the antichrist (some say this is Obama, others that it is Hillary).

The caller had a different spin to share--it was right there in the Nevada Desert that the New World Order is being assembled. And here's the extraterrestrial connection--

It begins with the claim that aliens have been among us for at least centuries. The government knows this and through the deployment of "men in black" has been covering it up since they are collaborating with the aliens, who are manipulating developments in human society so as to be able to better control and exploit earthlings.

According to the caller, these aliens have shapeshifted into human form so they can move among us undetected. They are now close to taking control of our government and corporate and religious institutions and are as a result in the final stages of their plan to take over the world and impose a new order.

In return for the coverup, the U.S. government gets help from the aliens in the development and testing of flying-saucer weapons systems.

Quite a Faustian bargain, I thought.

Finally cutting her off, Harley and McNamara chimed in, "Compared to this, Donald Trump doesn't sound so bad."

September 16, 2014--Flying Saucers Have Landed!

Only two books remain from my adolescent 12-book "library"--Guadalcanal Diary, that 1943 best-seller which was given to me by my Uncle Ben, which is noted for its portrayal of gritty Marine-corps camaraderie; and George Adamski's, Flying Saucers Have Landed, which appeared 10 years later at the then height of the flying-saucer craze.

Adamski is one of the original contactees, claiming to have closely encountered space aliens who whisked him to the moon and other planets in their UFOs. His book is about that and, spectacularly, also includes an insert of glossy photos of spaceships that look like, well, saucers with tea cups placed on top or fluorescent cigar-shaped extra-terrestrial craft.

I understand my interest in the Marine-Corps manly camaraderie part--I was a too-skinny kid who had few friends, none of them very manly. But I am not sure why flying saucers were such an obsession. As they were for much of the nation living in Cold War fear of an impending nuclear cataclysm.

Maybe that's the point--the impending doomsday scenario. If we couldn't scare off the Russians with our own ICBMs, and they decided to nuke us, maybe some friendly space aliens would scoop us up and carry us off to the safety of the far side of Venus.

Today, belief in UFOs also works well with conspiratorial thinking.

If things are a seemingly out-of-control mess, there must be reasons for this that absolve us of responsibility. We can't have anything to do with causing Islamic jihadists to rampage across the Middle East. It couldn't possibly be even partly our fault that we are rapidly seeing the decline of two-parent families and same-sex marriage. If we weren't under alien control our schools would work better, people of color would calm down, women would stop wanting abortions, no one would be messing with our guns, or, above all, enable someone like a Barack Obama to become president.

This must all be part of an intergalactic conspiracy. Since real Americans left to our own devices and under our own control would never allow any of this to happen, there must be forces that have taken over our bodies, minds, and souls. Alien invaders and others who are disguised to look like humans are living among us in sleeper cells ready to strike and take control and dominate us when signaled by their masters to do so.

And to many who believe in this scenario, this explanation, that moment of total subjugation is near.

If you doubt this, for insomniacs, seven nights a week between 1:00am-5:00am Eastern Time, on AM radio, tune in to Coast to Coast hosted by George Norry. You will hear all about UFOs, parapsychology, strange occurrences, life after death, and other unexplained phenomena. Begun in 1984 by Art Bell, Coast to Coast is heard on nearly 600 station in the U.S. and has more than 3.0 million listeners, many of whom call in to report their own UFO sightings and abductions. Others tell about their ESP experiences or what they experienced when surviving clinical death (a hint--seeing angels and ghosts of long-departed relatives is part of the answer).

Last week Coast to Coast dealt with subjects ranging from how the Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax, suspicious suicides throughout history (Cleopatra, Adolf Hitler, Kurt Cobain, and of course Marilyn Monroe), shamanism, biblical cycles, and how 9/11 was not caused by airplanes or explosions but by "directed energy technology."

And that was just last week!