Comments on: The Night I Was Almost Abducted by Aliens in Boston https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/ Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:23:44 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.8 By: Mandrake https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545767 Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:23:44 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545767 I don’t understand the lights–particularly the flashing ones. These advanced civilizations need high beams to traverse the universe lest they smash into a star, a planet, or an asteroid? Flashing lights are used to attract attention. It makes little sense that the ETs would bring attention to themselves by lighting up like Vegas yet refuse to actually stop in and say hello. How rude. If they’re trying to avoid detection, they should turn off their stupid flashing lights, paint their spaceships so as not to reflect sunlight, and use stealth technology to avoid radar detection.

I’d *love* to have the world visited by civilizations from across the universe. Hopefully, it would put a damper on the view that we human beings are the most freakin’ specialest things and that the universe was created just for us. It would also be interesting to see how religions would respond to such an incident. I suppose they’d find some way to spin it, as in “our” story of creation/God/meaning of life and afterlife still holds true for us; God is so special that he gave the aliens their own creation story, Bible, meaning of life and afterlife.

]]> By: donneek https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545766 Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:52:12 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545766 Much the same thing could be said about “Faith”. Billions of people believe that there is a god, because hundreds of religious leaders and their written words supposedly written by those who know, say it is true so it must be so. One must just have faith, no matter that there is no measurable proof that a supreme being exists.

Illogical yes, mass hypnosis probably but one dare not question the validity of the premise for fear of being labeled dangerous and blasphemous and worthy of death. I don’t see much difference in the evangelism of true believers in UFO’s, birthers, creationism, right to lifers etc. I don’t have problem with born again’s it’s just that they keep throwing their after birth on me.

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545765 Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:29:43 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545765 Eric, sorry for the messy sentence, but it was indeed misunderstood. Let me try the sentence again, and I’ll elaborate a little:

Most individuals who claim to sewe an alien spacecraft saw their own first images of an alien space craft in popular media such as a movie or TV. The vast majority of reported alien space ships look like what one would expect based on popular culture.

Number of people who claim to have seen a flying saucer who knew, before seeing this claimed flying saucer, what a flyins saucer would look like because they saw one on TV or in some other popular culture media outlet: All of them.

Number of people who claim to have seen a flying saucer who knew, before seeing this, only about Alexander the Great’s “Flying Sheild: Zero

Number of people who claim to have seen wha we might interpret as an alien space craft whether or not they claimed that that is what it was and who did not have a prior source for what the objet looked like: A few, including Alexander the Great, apparently. But you do need to supply a reference for that. Not because I don’t believe you, but because it woudl be interesting to read the original.

]]> By: Eric https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545764 Mon, 21 Sep 2009 02:56:42 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545764 ******************
Greg wrote:

“The first flying saucers most people who have seen them “in the wild” were seen in movies.”
***********************

I’m not really sure what this sentence is supposed to mean, but if I understand you correctly, you are saying that UFO sightings began with the movies.

Wrong.

Reports date back all through recorded history. For example, Alexander the Great, in his travels, reported seeing a metallic object (“like a flying shield”) in the sky.

The first images date back to 1870 LONG before the scifi films of the 50’s (see link below).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/3447508/UFO-sightings-140-years-of–UFO-pictures.html

___________________________

]]> By: Rodger the Lodger https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545763 Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:07:59 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545763 Ah yes, Gov. Fife “white guy” Symington and the famous Phoenix Lights. A while ago but I still remember the basics. There was an amateur astronomer out stargazing that night, with a couple of female relatives, when one mentioned that there was a line of strange looking lights coming down from the north. He swung the scope around to look at them and discovered a flight of fighters in a v formation (hence Fife’s seeing his triangular shaped alien ship), one of the women looked at them and they went back to looking at stars. When the tv stations lit up with the ufo reports, he called a couple of local radio or tv stations, but they were more interested in the excitement. I saw a two or three sentence blurb in the local paper here in Baja Arizona the next morning about him in the big story, but “UFOs cum flying saucers” were all the rage. The Maryland? Guard a few days later confirmed that they had followed I-17 down from the Prescott area and turned west toward the Goldwater Range at about that time.

We do have almost as interesting Governors as La., and I don’t remember how long it’s been since a Gov. has finished their term.

As an aside, when I was young and rambunctious, I pushed F-4s around the sky for a living. I can guarantee you that I have seen hundreds of UFOs, but the vast vast majority were fairly quickly identified. No swamp gas or Venus, but one of them was a large weather balloon at about 50,000ft and some 10-12K feet almost straight above me, just at local sunset. Beautiful sight!

]]> By: llewelly https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545762 Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:17:58 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545762

I’m very near old enough to identify as an Old Hag. Until now, I was kind of looking forward to retirement and hobbies and relaxation – now you tell me I’m required to travel a likely indecent amount, creep ’round at night, break into houses, and sit on the chests of at least three unsuspecting innocent strangers? I’m outraged, I tell you, outraged! This is no way to respect the elderly ladies of your communities!

Listen, it’s just a bunch of pervs having kinky fantasies. You can ignore them. Really.

]]> By: llewelly https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545761 Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:14:36 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545761 Actually, everyone has been abducted by aliens. However – the memory alternation technology usually works right. If it weren’t for persistent bugs in the memory-rewriting software, no-one would ever think they’d been abducted by aliens.
I’ve tried to convince the aliens they should open source the software, on the grounds that more eyes would cut down the number and severity of bugs, but they always give me all this guff about trade secrets and “intellectual property”.

]]> By: Bee https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545760 Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:11:57 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545760 I’m very near old enough to identify as an Old Hag. Until now, I was kind of looking forward to retirement and hobbies and relaxation – now you tell me I’m required to travel a likely indecent amount, creep ’round at night, break into houses, and sit on the chests of at least three unsuspecting innocent strangers? I’m outraged, I tell you, outraged! This is no way to respect the elderly ladies of your communities!

]]> By: Val https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545759 Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:10:49 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545759 If aliens were hanging around the earth, they would intentionally create exactly this kind of confusion among the earthlings.

]]> By: Carnagie https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545758 Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:44:07 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/19/the-night-i-was-almost-abducte/#comment-545758 Well, you weren’t really almost abducted. You just almost thought you were maybe going to be abducted. But I suppose that sucks as a title.

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