CELEBRITY COME DANCING?

Sorry, but I just couldn't resist this typo from the January 2008 issue of MUFON UFO Journal!

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DESERT YAWN

Those serious ufologists over on UFO UpDates are always terribly worried that mainstream science and the mainstream media don't take them seriously. Why, they demand, do news-stories about UFO sightings always come out with the same silly X-File quips? Why don't scientists realise that there is a serious field of study in the UFO subject? Why, oh why, will no-one take us seriously?

Well, perhaps this is a clue. About this time every year I get a nice brochure advertising the 'International UFO Congress and Film Festival' at a place called Laughlin, Nevada, in the middle of nowhere, or the Mohave Desert, which amounts to the same thing. This is probably one of the biggest UFO events in the world, and in the words of the organisers the speakers "will be bringing us new information, new expertise and new insights". So if someone thought this might be the place to find out just what the UFO problem is all about - and you get hotel accommodation and eight days full of presentations and movies for a dollar under $500, which sound good value to me - this might be just the place to go.

Oh dear. Well let's start with the (comparatively) sensible stuff. Malcolm Robinson, the UK's representative here, gives what looks like it will be a fairly straightforward account of three Scottish cases: Livingston, the Fife UFO Incident, and the A70 UFO. Well ... OK. But if you stick around afterwards the tone changes rapidly; you get a gent called David Serida telling us how reverse-engineering alien technology can solve global warming and the energy crisis. Maybe someone should tell Gordon Brown.

Then there's someone describing "the basis of the Third Reich's research into hyperdimension physics ... to discover a technology ... that would be capable of manipulating the fabric of space-time for free energy, field propulsion and the ultimate doomsday weapon".

Jaime Maussan from Mexico is a man who seems to have shot more video footage of UFOs than anyone alive,. and what's he got for the Laughlin fans this time: "See footage never shown before from all over the world, not just Mexico. This presentation will shock and amaze even the biggest skeptics out there!" Well I thing us big skeptics will be the judge of that, Jaime.

Robert Dean (remember him?) will be giving "a detailed analysis of the current so-called UFO/ETI situation and why our 'government' (love those scare-quotes) still refuses to reveal anything official about the ET presence on earth and throughout the solar system." I somehow doubt that the analysis will include the possibility that there is nothing to disclose.

Another name looming up from the past is Wendelle Stevens, who will be showing an interview with a US airman who was involved in six crashed UFO recoveries in the late seventies and early eighties, and tell where the craft and body bags were taken.

Michael Salla, who always seems to crop up at these events, with his exopolitics shtick while be revealing "whistleblower evidence" of the secret agreements that are in place between the government and the aliens - and systematically analyses them!

I thought there might be an outbreak of sanity when i saw Jim Marrs telling us "whatever you do, don't believe anything you hear from the government". Good advice, but he rather spoils it by then rambling on about how the United States is bout to turn into the Fourth Reich.

And this is just the stuff that actually has something to do with UFOs. We also have the usual New Age waffle about Hopi Prophesies; talking to the spirits - bring your spirit family (presumably they don't have to pay the $499 fee); accessing your exoconsciousness; preparing for impending Planetary transformations - something to do with crop circles, this one; and to top it all a guy called Ed Grimsley will tell you how you too can see laser wars between delta- and saucer-shaped craft.

But just to prove this is a real scientific conference, who do you think is there? That's right, our old friend, the seriously-bearded, serious nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, who will be taking a break from his usual lecture circuit beat of university physics departments, Lions Clubs and cruise liners.

This is desperate stuff. Even if there was a genuine scientific problem at the heart of the UFO mystery - which I doubt - what chance does it ever have of being taken seriously when it is surrounded by this carnival of freaks and fantasists? Ultimately ufology can never be a science, because the so-called 'fringe' is actually the heart of it. Without events like the Laughlin Laugh-In ufology would be just a few puzzling incidents which no-one was really terribly bothered about.

GREAT MAGAZINE, SHAME ABOUT THE FOOD

In the latest Fortean Times (no. 245, February 2009) Bob Rickard not only offers me the opportunity to explain to readers why I decided to cease publication of Magonia magazine, but also delivers some incredibly generous praise in an editorial appreciation of Magonia's contribution to ufology. He describes it as FT's 'philosophical elder brother', which coming from the editor of a magazine with a circulation in the tens of thousands to one whose circulation has never exceeded a few hundred, is a remarkable compliment. Thank you Bob.

But there's another item in the editorial. Bob Rickard was contacted by PR people from a newly-opened restaurant called Bob Bob Ricard. It turns out that the caff is owned by two guys, one calle Bob and one called Ric(h)ard, and as Bob owns two-thirds of it, he claims two-thirds of the name. Bob (our Bob) ends his piece "... we're still waiting for our invitation to lunch."

Well if Bob's read AA Gill's review of the place in this week's Sunday Times, he may be glad he didn't get an invite.

Gill isn't impressed. Not by the décor: "like Liberace's bathroom dropped into a Texas diner"; nor by the food: "... pork rillettes were served in a Kilner jar and smelled like bottom ... I had a burger, I wasn't asked how I wanted it. If I'd said 'I want it to be grey, tasteless, flacid and wholly unremarkable in every particular' then ... they got it to a T".

Least of all is he impressed by a little device on his table: "There was another button by the table which was to call for champagne. Of all the gimicky bits of fiddly twaddle the hospitality industry has come up with ... this was the most crapulously pointless. A button that called the waiter would have been useful; a button that called the waiter a t*** would heve been better; a button that severely electrocuted the chef would have been amusing. But perhaps most sensible and useful would have been a button that called Domino's Pizza."

I wonder if the case of the mysteriously disappearing restaurant might appear in Fortean Times soon.

THE PALM TREE FLYING SAUCER

Remember that amazing video-clip that was circulating a while ago showing a huge flying saucer somewhere in Haiti? The one that looked like it was made from palm tree fronds? Impressive CGI, but less impressive as a real saucer. Well, here's an interview its creator, David Nicolas, a French CGI wizard. It's from Kentaro Mori's website in Brazil, and I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank Kentaro for all the hard work he's put in getting the Magonia archive website (http://magonia.haaan.com/) back up on-line, and in a format that even a computer dunce like me can manage to update.

Here's the link: http://forgetomori.com/2009/ufos/ufo-photos/interview-with-the-creator-of-the-haitian-ufos/ It's in Portuguese, there is an automated (sort of) translation, but just from watching the pictures it's pretty clear what being said. And there's a bonus clip of a UFO crashing into the sea off Rio de Janiero. Brazilian-based hoaxes have got much more sophisticated than in the days of Trindade Island!

GEORGIA GUIDESTONES

A curious item in Peter McKay's column in todays Daily Mail

"Picking up the signals

"Browsing in a Warwickshire antiques shop (as you do), I remarked to the owner - while admiring an old wireless set - that I'd always had poor reception from digital radios. The amiable-looking middle-aged man said there was a reason for that. Digital networks were being used by aliens to broadcast secret messages.

"I smiled at what I took to be his dry humour, persisting: 'I never had a problem with FM.' Ignoring this, he said messages were being sent preparing us for the coming landing of aliens (Promised Land meant 'promised landing area') and a new world in which the human population was 'culled' to 500 million, or about a tenth of its present total.

"'It's all on Google - check out Georgia Guidestones,' he advised. Turns out to be the teaching of some Seventies U.S. cult and includes ten new commandments, including: 'Be not a cancer on the Earth'. My new friend said everything else - Gaza, Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, Celebrity Big Brother - was meaningless. Just listen to the messages. They're out there."

Well, the Georgia Guidestones are out there. All to do with the 'occult philosophy' of Thomas Paine, apparently, but I don't see anything about aliens broadcasting secret messages on digital radio. Anybody know anything more about this?