Ray's X-Blog

Space Cadets And The Starship Enterprise James T. Kirk, captain of the USS Starship Enterprise, and his team drop in on the planet Mythra, a world settled eons ago by humans who fled the planet Earth. Beaming down via transporter, Kirk & Co. materialize in a public square but the inhabitants are unimpressed. The Mythrans just walk by, a "silly happy look on their faces." This scene seems typical of any Star Trek adventure during the original run of the TV series. Except this adventure takes place in the pages of the book, Mission to Horatius , a novel for young readers by Mack Reynolds with illustrations by Sparky Moore (1968, Western Publishing Company). Not a bad story; it's in the same style of the TV show. Nothing unusual until I find out why Mythrans have silly happy expressions. They've been dosed with anodyne, a local form of LSD. Let Dr. McCoy, the Enterprise's doctor, explain: "I would have to analyze it further in my laboratory on the shi

Moseley, Nazca Lines and the Cosmic Balance Was Jim Moseley the first to make the connection? A while ago I was talking telephonically (not telepathically) with Jim, editor of Saucer Smear, about an article he wrote for my blog dealing with the Nazca lines in Peru. Back in the 1950s he visited that area and formulated the theory that the lines were evidence of mankind's contact with beings beyond this world, a theory he shared in Fate magazine. I asked him if he was the one who originated the idea, years before Erich Von Daniken came on the scene. Jim, who at times can be humble, declined to make that statement. At some point I was going to dig into the matter via Google but I never got around to it. Recently Jim sent me a copy of a snail mail letter from an online reader, a Curt Collins of Jackson, MS, who did the research, proving that Jim is indeed the first to publicly propose the theory. Collins cites an entry from the Skeptic's Dictionary site that James W. Moseley

Vortex Or Void On Dec. 21st, 2012 at 11:11 Universal Time "UFO Lawyer" Peter Gersten will take a leap of faith from a towering summit in Sedona, Arizona. He will enter an interdimensional portal to elsewhere -- or not. It's a somewhat complicated story about how Gersten came to this decision. At his Website -- 11:11 Invitation 2012 -- he explains how the symbolism of 11:11 took on sudden importance in his life. In October 1998 Gersten noticed that 11:11 and its variations (1111, 111,11) kept popping up at different times and places, more than any other number combination, with digital devices and even with other shapes and forms. He wondered about the significance of these events. On the Internet some people learned that they were not alone, others were also seeing 11:11 in a special context. For example, when someone happened to check his digital watch, the time would be 11:11, the number occurring more than random chance. Seeing that number would cause a strange

No More Free Zine I open up the envelope. A few dollar bills, another request for my zine. It dawns on me: Why am I giving away my zine for free online? Why am I bothering to convert the file into a PDF and going through the process of uploading to my Web site, then not even seeing one comment for my effort? Everyone reads my blog for free. I don't make a dime. There are no ads on my blog. Costs are negligible when it comes to distribution. A blog is efficient, easy. But my paper zine involves paper, ink, envelopes, stamps -- it costs. Plus time, printing and collating copies, addressing and stamping envelopes, etc. In no way is meatspace zine publishing as efficient and easy as blogging. No more free zine. No longer will I upload each edition as a PDF so that anyone can print it out. Starting with the next issue, if someone wants a copy, they can send me $2.00 cash (US bills, no coin). As before The Ray X X-Rayer will essentially be a collection of my blog posts, some

Radio Clip: Jewish Nazis OK, no progress on my zine. I've been working on other projeX. I've been digitizing audio recordings on tape. And the tapes I'm digitizing are VHS. Yes, I made audio recordings on VHS tape. Why? Well, back in the old days, you could record with a cassette tape but the best you could do was 45 minutes per side. Yes, there were 120 minute blank tapes, one hour each side, but they had a tendency to break or jam. So when I wanted to record an hour-long program or longer on radio, I would hook up the audio jack on the VCR to the radio and left the video going. If I eliminated the visual part the recording would screw up, the VCR would go crazy. Actually the video part is helpful, making it easier to locate audio sections I want to digitize, especially with fast-forward/rewind searching. I wanted to share a couple of audio clips here at my blog and so I'm been trying to use the editing program Audacity. It works OK -- when this damn computer

eXperiment I might be trying something different with my blog and blogzine this time around -- depending upon your reaction. To eliminate duplication of effort, I will write my zine first instead of collecting a few posts from this blog. When the issue is finished, I will put a link here so that you can read it as a PDF file at my Web site. That means no posts on this blog for a while but at the same time you can read the zine in one sitting, even print it out if you want. Comments about this will be appreciated.