Ray's X-Blog

Straight Scoop On Twisty Subjects Cults, Conspiracies, & Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull & Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more by Arthur Goldwag. Vintage Books/Random House 2009. Ever wonder about those shadowy groups that want to run -- or maybe are running -- the world? The Council on Foreign Relations, the Illuminati, that ilk? Or maybe you want to learn more about less nefarious organizations like Woodmen of the World. Try Cults, Conspiracies, & Secret Societies by Arthur Goldwag. He acts as a knowledgeable guide through the convoluted historical mazes of non-mainstream organizations. This non-fiction book is easy-to-read, easy-to-grok, but not so easy to use as a reference. CC&SS is broken down into the three general categories mentioned in the title. Of course, this is Goldwag's personal organization. You might think a subject should be under Cults but it's actually include

Matt Graeber: Knowing, Not Simply Believing Time to set the record straight. In a previous post, "Voodoo Skepticism," I talked about Matt Graeber's articles in the online magazine, SUNlite. Matt examined various UFO cases with a psychological slant, showing how the mindset and experience of the witness could connect symbolically with the details of the sighting. While an interesting approach, I didn't really buy into Matt's angle, at least all of the symbolism. To me it was "voodoo" -- mainly because too much of psychology/psychiatry, the Freudian stuff, is voodoo. But that's my opinion. I did screw up assuming that since Matt's article appeared in SUNlite -- Tim Printy's spiritual successor to the late Phil Klass's Skeptical UFO Newsletter -- that he was a UFO researcher who ended up becoming a skeptic as the result of disappointments along the way with his research. Thus my "Voodoo Skepticism" title. Matt emailed me and t

The Pod People Syndrome Friend or foe? They look like you. They act like you. But some of them are anti-you. That creeping paranoia is the set-up of the SF novel, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers , by Jack Finney. It's a powerful basis for a story, so powerful that the novel has been adapted as a movie four different times. The term "pod people" has become part of our language, referring to individuals who are only emotionless copies of real human beings. In Invasion Of The Body Snatchers alien seed pods land on our planet and covertly invade by duplication and replacement. While a human victim sleeps, a nearby pod telepathically links to the victim, stealing his memories. The pod hatches and a duplicate of the victim is formed. The duplicate replaces the victim, pretending to be him. But the physical and mental copying leaves out one important human factor: emotion. The alien has to fake his feelings; those closest to the invader can sense the difference. The term

Through A Mission Darkly I'm skip-reading the book, "Dark Mission: The Secret History Of NASA," (2007) by Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara. What do I mean by skip-reading? I jump around and read chapters or sections in my own sequence. For eXample, I'll read the last few chapters and then the first ones. So while I haven't read the whole book, I've read enough to give some initial impressions. And I suspect if I ever finish the book, these impressions won't change. Hoagland is known for fantastic claims about NASA and the great conspiracy to keep secret from the public at large the existence of ET ruins on the moon and Mars. He and other like-minded researchers take images from various space missions and then with special filtering processes -- plus highly subjective interpretations -- find the hidden details. The detailed tech talk generally sounds reasonable but what makes his POV dubious are the photo examples of his research. A high contrast photo

Voodoo Skepticism I'm skeptical about true believers -- and skeptics. I mean skeptical in the sense that I eXamine claims with a critical -- but not emotional -- eye. For eXample, I have a problem with an article by Matt Graeber in issue V. 2 #2 (March-April 2010) of the "SUNlite" newsletter, a piece entitled "Twenty first century UFOlogy Part III." (SUN = Skeptical UFO Newsletter). You can download the PFD file of the issue at http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/SUNlite.htm . Graeber examines two UFO sightings using the traditional skeptical POV, i.e., UFOs aren't extraordinary objects, they're really misidentified everyday objects. In the first case from 1976, a "Mr. Raefield" mistook birds (gulls) one misty morning as disc-shaped alien spacecraft. And in the second case (1977), a Mrs. Bailey confused an airplane with its lights for a flying saucer one night. Graeber provides an added dimension to his examinations of these cases, the c

XR #70 (And Bill Gate's Rip Off) It's up: the PDF version of my hardcopy zine, Ray X X-Rayer, the latest issue. A select collection of posts from this blog. Find it at http://xrayer.com . As for the hardcopy version -- well, once again, a problem but not with quality. My computer printer does a good job of producing copies but it gets troublesome when I do double-sided pages, even though I carefully follow the on-screen directions. So some readers on my snail mail list got copies printed only on one side. And that's the way I'll probably keep printing out my zine. No more out of sequence pages and wasted sheets. Less chance of a paper jam. I suspect my printer problems are related to the much-vilified Vista. I'm not spending one dime on Windows 7. Why should I pay for Bill Gates' mistake? He should be giving a free copy of W7 to everyone who has Vista. But why bother when he can charge for an upgrade? It's amazing how a company can stick people w

Gee, I Didn't Know That Want jaw-dropping insights? Tune in with shortwave radio. No, I don't mean getting info from broadcasts from other countries far away like China and Australia. There's plenty of enlightenment available right here in the United States via SW. For years a group of ham radio superpatriots have been meeting every Saturday to discuss "issues of the day." Heard generally along the east cost in the 75 meter band, the Liberty Netters know what's going on with the Megaconspiracy to destroy democracy and enslave all free minds. I thought the Liberty Net gang were the only ones to indulge in such deep probes into the Shadow Government until I stumbled upon another ham radio operator with his own take on the grand machinations behind the scenes. Apparently not affiliated with the LibNet, this guy claims that the source of all evil is the Pope. Yup, the Catholic Conspiracy is behind all the bad crap in the world. Take this amazing fact: the K