Semi-Dead Shortwave Propagation usually sucks when I try to tune in the Saturday night gathering of the Liberty Net. Now I listen via a streaming website run by one of the Lib Netters. On some nights conditions are so bad that even the amateur radio operators participating in the net have problems hearing each other, despite their pro equipment. But even if propagation conditions were good, shortwave radio overall is dying out. International broadcasters like the BBC in England, DW in Germany and Radio Netherlands have stopped transmitting their programs to the US. One excuse for cutting back is that people can listen on their home computers via streaming. I still enjoy listening to a radio but the stations that have remained on the air, Radio Australia and Radio New Zealand International, are being affected by the lousy listening conditions. So once again I turn to streaming audio on my computer. I want to hear what other countries are saying. They say the sunspot cycle is on t...
Posts
Matthew Graeber: A Sketch It started with an UFO sighting when he was around twelve years old. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. August 1953. A hot muggy night. Unable to sleep, young Matthew Graeber sat on the edge of his bed, his elbows on the window sill, chin tucked on his hands. Despite the darkness the view outside his window was well-lit by the ambient illumination of street lights. A mysterious globe appeared in the sky, glowing with a radiance suggestive of a full moon. As it turned it took on the appearance of a disc-shaped object. Whatever it was, it quickly disappeared into the distance like a TV set being shut off, the image fading into a tiny white dot before being swallowed by the blackness. He mentioned the brief sighting (about six seconds duration) to his mother, asking her if they should report it to the Air Force. She replied maybe next time if he saw it again. The event piqued his interest. Matt read everything he could on the subject of "flying saucers,...
XR #71 It's up at http://www.xrayer.com -- the latest edition of my zine, The Ray X X-Rayer (PDF file). XR #71 features posts from this blog in a convenient-to-print format. There is some new material in the intro, a couple of items I haven't written about here. So before they get too old -- and before I forget -- here are those items... Hot Gas, Northern Lights & UFOS Ever see the Northern Lights? When the sun is active it throws off a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) that hits the earth's magnetic field and -- Voila! -- the aurora is produced. (Good thing I proofread this stuff. I had written "Viola!") Over at her blog, The Orange Orb, Regan Lee discussed the sighting of a triangular UFO one night in West Linn, Oregon. The observer contacted local media but was unable to speak to any live people except one at a TV station. The station employee replied "that's kind of funny that you'd report that today because it's the Spring Equinox a...
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...