Ray's X-Blog

Rick Hilberg, editor of the newsletter Flying Saucer Digest , has been covering the UFO scene for decades.  He jokingly refers to himself as an “old geezer, dinosaur ufologist.”  Responding to my previous blog article, “Kimball Empties Roswell Saucer,”  he sent his reactions via snail mail.  He wrote: The Kimball-Randle "feud" sounds so much like other disputes from the past years of "ufoology". The fact that it centers around the Roswell "crash" isn't surprising at all to me, as apparently there is still some milk left in that old cash cow. Hey, the rumor of some alleged photos can only breathe some new life into old Bossy, and maybe even warrant a new book or two and certainly some exposure on one of the insipid tabloid TV UFO programs on cable. Speaking of TV coverage of the UFO subject, I'm always amazed at how all of them (as well as countless articles in the press and on the Internet) proclaim that the whole flying saucer thing started w...

Somehow I didn't hear a mysterious boom that recently shook the region. I know I was outside at the time because I had left somewhere just before 8 PM Tuesday night, November 26, and it was at least a ten minute walk to my destination .  Reports of the boom – felt from Montreal to a town roughly 15 miles west of here (Plattsburgh) – started to come in to the media just after 8 PM. One online report sent to a local TV station described the house shaking.  But according to the US Geological Survey no earthquakes were detected in the region, either here or Canada.  The source of the shock-rock was unknown. Once again I've missed out experiencing a Fortean mystery.  Could it be that my skeptical side is making me blind to such events?

Yes, I sometimes use a ten dollar word but I try to eschew academese. There's this commenter on ufological topics, Bruce Deunsing, who seems to be making a valid point – if you can wade through his dense observations. Then again, his response to a post at the UFO Iconoclast(s) site entitled "UFOs and the Rabble"  is appropriate considering the post's bouts of bloviation.  (The essay is signed "RR," so I'm assuming the writer is Rich Reynolds or maybe Robert Redford.)  But while I can get the gist of the post with some effort Bruce's comment seems to be an exercise in "I-can-top-that-for-turgid-opacity."  Here's part of his response: "What constitutes an advanced civilization? Of course this is a game of comparisons played by those as card in what remains of Ufology which has descended into the proverbial act of reading tea leaves based on their premise that their basis of comparison of such an advanced civilization compare...

  After alienating Kevin Randle over a Dream Team controversy involving rumors of photographic slides showing an otherworldly being, the irked Paul Kimball stirred a dust-up with his uncle, physicist/ufology researcher/"Roswell-was-an-ET-crash" proponent Stan Friedman. Please note that both Stan and Paul are citizens of The Great White North but their respective essays lay myth to the concept of a “gray Canadian.” In his essay entitled “Paul Kimball's UFO Debunking and Irrationality"  Stan responded to a essay by his nephew that challenged him on a number of points.  Paul even referred to Stan's concept of nuclear-powered rockets as interstellar spacecraft as "balderdash."  Youch!   (Paul’s essay, “The Illogic of the Crashed ET Spacecraft Myth,” can be read here .) The main theme of Stan’s essay is how educated and intelligent people can act so irrational when it comes to debunking certain ufological beliefs.  After citing a dubious debunk...

Filmmaker/researcher Paul Kimball has seen the light – and it ain't a UFO. For years he commented on various subjects including ufology at his Blogspot site, The Other Side of Truth .  I stopped by there the other day and couldn't access it. With some Google searching I discovered that Paul has closed down that site.   The Other Side of Truth is now a subdomain at his personal website [ http://beyonderstv.com/the-other-side-of-truth/ ]. On his Facebook page [ https://www.facebook.com/othersideoftruth ] Paul announced the best of his writing from Blogspot is being transferred to his personal Website.  Also he will continue to comment on paranormal subjects such as ghosts but no more UFOs. As I had suspected the Blogspot site was shut down due to the dust-up between Paul and UFO researcher Kevin Randle. Just to hit the key points of the controversy: Kevin belonged to a "Dream Team" of researchers searching for the truth behind the Roswell Crash.  Recent...

Visual mash-up by Ray X. "If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear." - Gene Roddenberry Back in the 1960s a producer had to push to have any diversity in a TV program.  In creating the original Star Trek TV series Gene Roddenberry wanted to show a crew of many different cultures working in harmony. For some the concept of multinationalism was impossible to accept.  But Roddenberry persisted: his starship team included characters like Communications Officer Uhura who was of African descent.  She was an important crew member, not someone cast in a lowly support role. One way this tolerance of other cultures was expressed was through the IDIC concept: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.  One shouldn't automatically fear "the other." ...

Obviously I haven't been writing/blogging that often so maybe I should get caught up on a few items. I haven't been devoting/wasting as much time as before listening to the Liberty Net ( www.3950.net ).  Part of the reason is that it's the same old same old with them, ultra-right-wing ham radio operators flogging the same dead pale horse. One item of note is how the LibNetters describe the unjustified willingness by liberals to overlook any flaws or hypocrisy with President Barack Obama.  They described the condition as "negrophilia."  Huh?  Is that in the DMS (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)? And then there's an incident from some time ago when a regular participant, Stan, was really wound up, talking on and on.  Instead of politely interrupting and telling him to wrap it up, the other LibNetters moved to a different frequency, leaving the loquacious commenter all alone.   Later Stan would realize he was talking to t...

"Hey, this ain't good for the womenfolk.  Anyone got a fig leaf?" "Well, that'll have to do.  If my wife wasn't such a stick in the mud..." There was some excitement over dere in Cardiff, NY back in October of 1869.  During a well diggin' on Stub Newell's spread the boys found a giant petrified man in the ground!  Even some of those science folks said so, so dere. Or so the story went.  Actually it was a hoax, the carved statue placed into the ground a year before to make its discovery appear more authentic, the giant and the soil settling into place. A great overview to the hoax is provided by the non-fiction book, The Giant and How He Humbugged America by Jim Murphy (Scholastic Press).  Don't be turned off that this book is classified as "juvenile literature" for readers ten years and older: adults will also find it a ripping good read.  Sometimes non-fiction books for young readers can be just as informative...

I know from experience that having word verification/CAPTCHA turned off for comments here at Blogger means the spammers start showing up. At the same time it can be a pain when you have to squint your eyes and brain to make out distorted letters and numbers that you have to correctly type in to get your comment accepted. So besides leaving your observations here at the blog, you can now use my dedicated email address for comments: ray.x.comment@gmail.com I appreciate feedback and maybe this will help to increase the number of comments.

Lately it seems the Church of Scientology can't catch a break from bad publicity. The publication of the book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, by Lawrence Wright dealt with key issues about the controversial church founded by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.  The church strongly contested parts of the book. Then actress Leah Remini left the church, saying she was being harassed for asking about the whereabouts of Shelly Miscavige, the wife of Scientology's present leader, David Miscavige.  She filed a missing person report with the LAPD and even though the police said they had interviewed Mrs. Miscavige and she was OK, more troubling headlines with this story didn't help the church. And now there's the news report of the arrest of a PR Director for the church's Celebrity Centre in Las Vegas, Devon Campbell Newman, a 67 year old grandmother.  Law enforcement officials say that she and a male accomplice are members ...

The constant chore: tracking the latest posts at a variety of blogs.  In the old days I bookmarked each blog and then went through the list, checking to see if a site had any new items. Then came along "push" technology, i.e., a site would tell me when recent posts were added.  RSS: Really Simple Syndication.  With Google Reader this system worked well.  I would log on to Reader and there would be a listing of new posts, all in one convenient spot.  It worked great with my Android tablet. Then Google hit the kill switch on Reader. I looked for a replacement service: Bloglines, Feedly, AOL Reader.  These RSS reader programs have one thing in common: they suck.  Clumsy interfaces, glitches and hang-ups. I needed something that worked efficiently, especially with my tablet. And I finally found it. Bookmarks. Like in the old days I go through the list and directly access each site.  Not as convenient as Google Reader but less snags ...

No more inkjet printer. I've tried three different brands and they all end up wasting my money.  Unless you use it once a week in a properly climate-controlled environment, the cartridges dry out to the point where they're unusable, even though there's plenty of ink left inside them. I do have a laser printer that works great for my paperzine but not so great when addressing envelopes.  The heat causes the envelopes to seal so instead I was making do with an inkjet printer — but, once again, when I tried using it to mail out the latest edition of my zine, the cartridges were plugged up as if blocked with superglue. I've tried cleaning the heads through the printer's program, using isopropyl alcohol on a cotton swab, even invoking the Eldritch Name of Cthulhu, and they refuse to work.  I don't have time to baby inkjet cartridges. I hate addressing each envelope by hand.  I finally figured out a way to print envelopes with my laser printer. ...

In April 1925 Canadian inventor Ted Rogers introduced the first AC-powered radio to the world.  Before this innovation people had to make do with batteries.  Now someone could hook up a radio to the electrical system in their home and never worry about recharging again. This was before the adaptation to the two prong wall plug.  In olden times things were a bit screwy with appliances: everything used the same socket type invented for light bulbs.  Check out the accompanying illustration of a commemorative stamp recalling Roger's achievement.  To create the stamp part of an old ad was used, the image of a woman who has removed a light bulb and is connecting her Roger's Batteryless Radio.  But I wonder if there were at least a few homes with only one socket per room (maybe one socket in the whole house).  Someone had to decide whether to read or listen at night.  I wonder how many arguments that situation stirred up. "I don't want to rea...

During the course of a day I take a handful of meds.  I don't want to add another pill to the list and so refuse to use any sleep-inducing pharmaceuticals. One way to knock myself out is to read a boring book, usually something academic and turgid involving considerable concentration to figure out what the fug the author is talking about.  Someone like Noam Chomsky does the trick. I have a copy of Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies by the Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl G. Jung, translated by R.F.C. Hull.  With all due respect to the memory of Jung (he died in 1961) his writing does get to be Dense.  In Flying Saucers — a collection of Jung's writings dealing with UFOs — the author delves deeply into the symbology and psychological underpinnings of the subject.   Because he made his observations in the early days of Ufology, he usually referred to the mysterious skyborne objects as flying saucers, the popular term back...

Mind control? Writer/podcaster Micah Hanks is at the top of the list of ufologists who are being mind-controlled by evil aliens. Man, some people get all the luck.  (Why can't I end up with publicity like that?) Over at his site, The Gralien Report, Micah aggregates links to stories related to fringe topics and occasionally writes an article.  In his essay, Mind Numbness: The Truth About Government Mind Control, he discusses how a story is circulating that he and other attendees at a conference late last year were put under the control of the sinister ETs with a distinct appellation: the Dow Greys.  (I wonder if they're in league with Dow Chemical or Dow Jones?) Apparently the Dows took the unsuspecting attendees underneath the conference center and zapped them so that now they're spreading all sorts of disinfo. Micah has described the whole story as "complete rubbish."  A certain gadfly (ahem) commented at his Gralien site: "Gee, Micah, mayb...

I hate to disagree with a favorable review but... After reading his take on my paperzine, Ray X X-Rayer , it seems the reviewer got the wrong impression about what I'm doing through it and my blog.  Of course the fault could me mine because I've never really stated the intent behind my eXpressions. The reviewer said that I rough up lunatic UFOnuts and conspiracy theorists.  Yes, there are crazy people out there but I don't think they dominate – and therefore invalidate – areas like UFO and conspiracy research.  I consider situations individually, X-raying and showing the basic structure underneath each one and pointing out defects that may exist.  I try to be fair, doing more than just "roughing up" a few people along the way. I do have a problem with extreme skeptics – skep-nuts if you will – whose debunking sometimes needs to be debunked.  I see problems on both sides of the divide. The reviewer compared me to the late Jim Moseley, editor of Sauc...

Illuminati?  Prove it. I don't buy into the Mega–Conspiracy theory that states one organization at the top controls almost every little detail below; everything is planned, there is no "accidental" history. There is what I call the free marketplace of conspiracies, large and small ones that can overlap, work with or against each other depending upon circumstances. The book, Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power (2012) , is based upon secret material investigative reporter Seth Rosenfeld pried lose from the FBI through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act).  He documents what was really going on behind the scenes in the 1960s with the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. At that time Governor Ronald Reagan was working with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to suppress the student protests.  They didn't like university president Clark Kerr who they perceived wasn't standing up to the studen...

Some zine creators who still work mainly with dead trees call their medium the papernet, a response to the popularity of the internet. I have no problem switching between mediums, using either paper or photons. There are those who in paperzinedom who see the internet as a threat.  I don't. And there are a few who see the internet as the only way to communicate.  I don't. But the world of hardcopy isn't as important as it was in the past.  Digital offers benefits that paper can't match. I managed to save up enough money to finally buy a computer tablet (an Android, not Apple; I'm not a yuppie or have yuppie funds).   It's a seven inch tablet, portable and lightweight enough that I can easily take it with me to a wi-fi spot to download articles and posts from the Web.  Later I can lie in bed and read all the stuff as if it was contained in a large but thin paperback book. Now I have less print-outs adding to the mass of material that is taking over ...

"Velcro I grok but zippers?"  December 10, 1965.  Betty and Barney Hill returned home to find a mystery waiting for them: a large oval-shaped chuck of ice on the kitchen table.  They didn't know how it got there or what it signified. The inexplicable object greatly disturbed the couple.  It was another weird event following their abduction by humanoid aliens one night four years ago on a lonely country road.  Betty put the ice chunk in the sink, using hot water to melt it completely away. In her diary Betty noted the unusual properties of the ice.  There was no wetness on the table.  The chunk was light for its size and wasn't completely hard but "flexible."  She also recorded that there was a cut pattern inside it. This and other paranormal happenings are detailed in the book, "Captured!  The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience," by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden.  What I find unusual is that the Hills sought out p...

Over at skepchick.org those questionable ads keep popping up. As I mentioned in a previous post - "Skepchick's Incongruous Ads" - sometimes the automatically generated ads at the site are contrary to the organization's goals.  I've been randomly checking; the problem remains. Skeptics are against unproven medical claims and products.   For example, in a recent skepchick.org post entitled "Centrum Silver has Been 'Studied'” the writer, Masala Skeptic, says that the TV commercial for a vitamin supplement was misleading, showing how that while the ad didn't lie, it wasn't exactly being truthful.  She links to online sources to back up her point. OK, that's fine.  But what about the ads that appear with the article for Vitamin Advisor Andrew Weil, MD or Opurity Vitamins?  Have those companies been checked out? Most skeptics are atheists.  So why do I see ads on skepchick.org for a Christian dating service? The problem is worse w...

Once again skeptic-feminist Rebecca Watson has stirred up another controversy, this time with the social news website Reddit. And once again people are viciously attacking her online. On a panel at the recent SXSW conference in Austin, Texas she criticized Reddit for its lack of moderation, allowing the promulgation of bigoted and hateful comments and viewpoints. In her article at skepchick.org – "SXSW and Reddit’s Introspection Problem" - she gives examples of nasty comments made by Reddit fans and defenders. Watson has faced similar attacks before regarding the "Elevatorgate" incident at an atheist conference back in 2011. Talking about the furor in a slate.com article - "It Stands to Reason, Skeptics Can Be Sexist Too" - Watson said she had heard about sexism being experienced by women attending skeptic conferences. While at the atheist conference she decided to address this problem, writing: "I used my time to talk about what it’s ...

Back in February 1994 I didn't bother to note the publication date of the first issue of my zine, Ray X X-Rayer . I just say it debuted on Groundhog Day. I started my zine as something to do during another long insufferable winter. I was learning how to use the latest computers with mouses and windows through practical means: wordprocessing and layout. It was a way to keep my mind active instead of letting it be damaged by hibernation rot. I struggled with a program called PageMaker to format each issue. It was tricky learning how to format columns with "windowshades." Those windowshades had to be pulled up and down just right with the mouse. Now I just get along with Microsoft Word, a simpler way of doing the same thing (No shades, daddy-o). While the computer part has become easier, the writing half is still sometimes a struggle. If you told me back in 1994 I would still be producing the same zine, I would've been surprised. And if you told me I woul...

As mentioned in the previous post there was someone in the neighborhood with severe mental problems that was causing me some concern. Apparently that person has moved out; I haven't even seen the individual around town. Maybe the so-called safety net is helping. But I doubt it... At least with that person gone I can concentrate more energy on slogging thru another long winter. Maybe spring weather will come early this year – like May 1st.