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Feb 22nd show


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M

mike

Paranormal Adept
Ok, just started listening, was busy nursing a sick wife yesterday and couldnt listen "live" like i like to.

I'm not far in yet, but i want to make this point before i continue.
i have no problems with Mr Dolans comments, including his opinion regards LMH,i absolutley respect his stance 100 percent, her enthusiam for the feild may or may not be outweighed, by any of the mistakes shes made, but it has to be counted none the less. personally i think she has been duped by the drone case, and being only human and worried about how that will affect the whole "reporter" image, would be loath to admit it. concerned about the impact to her "career" and standing, its a human thing to do, and as good an explaination as any. but i digress.

so this is not a critisism of Mr Dolan, or his opinions, i just wanted to point out what seemed to me to be a massive "logic gap", which i think needs addressing as it may be pivotal in other matters here.

there are 3 things that need to be sorted not 2.

what we know is true (which for the sake of argumant i'll posit as an absolute, and not the murky bowl of reality)

things we think may be true

and the last absolute, which is missing,

what we know to be false (again absolute only for the sake of argument, for it too is a murky bowl of soup in reality)


this third option is where Mr Biedny is "coming from", to ignore that facet, is going to leave him unsatisfied, if you are trying to answer his question.

the data must be sorted into three datasets not two, its that third dataset that forms the interface necessary for the answers to his questions.

the questions cannot be "resolved" unless that third option is part of the equation.

again not a critique of either personality, just a dirty great hole in the logic as i see it.

when your sorting these things into piles, there needs to be a pile for the things we know to be false, quite simply Mr Biedny, like many of us like to start with that pile first, and then work through the other two
 
Well said Mike. When Richard mentioned those two buckets I was like hey, wait a minute here. From my experience I don't understand why you can't take anything that comes from Earthfiles and Project Camelot and Flush it down the toilet. I've had personal dealings with Linda Howe and she was really nasty with me—when i gently suggested that she slow down with the Drone stuff and investigate it further before piling on story upon story. Even Mr. Strieber jumped on the bus.( For context, I've been using Photoshop since 2.0 now and use 3D software on a regular basis. I also work for a Fruit company that designs great software for almost 10 years now ) The only thing she cares about is promoting her little pay-per-view "news" site. Didn't want to hear a word that might put a wrench in her fantastic story.

I'm with David. I read Dolan's first book and am a bit discouraged to hear some of the things he said. I was happy with his response to Peckman though.

Oh well.

David, I can understand your frustration, but you guys put on a great show, and are providing a noble perspective on the matter.

Hang in there.
 
just finished listening, "eye on the prize" i used that expression myself this morning.

black budgets...... i mean where does the "money" go ?

are they wallpapering the insides of these craft with dead presidents, or just building them out of solid gold....

money goes into salarys and resources, metals etc, but it moves, its not lost salarys get spent, companys that supply the materials get paid and they in turn spend it.
i would think a black ops budget would boost the economy not make it collapse.

zero point energy "free" energy, again wouldnt it make more sense to build deep underground bases for these generators, and keep them top secret, that way you could feed the electricty into the grid system, and cut back on your coal bills..... again if the govt had this tech, id expect them to be using it in just that fashion, but the economy should be healthy as a result, any factory that can get even 25 percent of its energy for "free" is going to outdo competitors.

is the govt trying to build saucers ?, well they definatly have been trying to build UFO's. stealth/spy planes being examples. the premise being that the vehicle does its job, while at the same time being undetected/identified.

there is an answer, of that im sure, something is happening and there is an explaination, ive noted how in my lifetime the "idea" that there are ET's has gone from being an idea rejected by most, to one now accepted by most. but if einstein is right and long distance space travel is virtually impractable, then the greater possibility is that they are us from "another" time.

if so the planet is no closer collectivly to the "truth" than it was when i was a lad, as accurate a guess as the old religions were.............

Time will tell, no doubt

i enjoyed the episode btw, listening to the shows, ive never once had the sense i had wasted my time
thanks again to the hosts and guest
 
I listened to the show last night and finished at six this morning driving to school, so i am a little foggy on the specific details. I can totally see where David is coming from regarding being frustrated with the entire field and the questionable (to be polite) personalities that make up ufology. Richard seems to be pretty on the mark on a lot of the details regarding the cover up, and in his book conclusively proves that there is a cover up of ufo activity. I think that my opinion, after having once again gone through a good portion of the archives of the show are pretty inline with what David thinks (and I know i'll be corrected if i am way off the mark), that the only thing we really know is that the government or factions in the government are covering up the phenomenon of ufos. From my perspective that is all any of us, from the lamen to supposed "experts" in the field can know. In the end there is a phenomenon that is occuring that has been documented in countless memos by the air force, fbi, cia, and whatever other intelligence organization you want to throw in, but it only cements the existence of there being unidentified flying objects, of what origin no one knows. Why people continously need to speak as if they know about alien agendas and space brothers, secret majestic type groups, or exopolitics is fruitless and will only lead to undermining the fact that the government has official memos and reports that can be verified regarding objects that they cannot identify by normal means. I personally believe that the field and study of ufos would gain much more credibility (if it hasn't been irreparably damaged) if it presented the information in a much more scholarly fashion-as i believe Richard Dolan has pretty much done with his book. If the field weeded out the steven greers of the world it might have a fighting chance of becoming a reasonable field where reasonable people can study the cases . . . but that is probably too much to ask at this point.
 
Thanks for all the kind comments and feedback, folks, it means the world to read all your thoughts and get some supportive words. When I read the kind of thoughtful commentary that you all take the time to post, it very much reminds me why I have to keep doing this with Gene. If we don't, who will?

dB
 
Way to get in there on the questions Gene! Every so many episodes, you reveal through your line of questioning that you have an immense, and encylopedic knowledge of the UFO phenomenon, and the players involved. You should write and publish, so I can purchase, a "History of UFOlolgists".
Dave, it was obvious by Richard's response to your 'big-brained' and poignant analysis (on-the-fly in fact), that he was taken aback by your relevant wizardry in the field of image-analysis.
Tension creates good music, and apparently good Paracast episodes as well. I think that Dolan was a great guest, the dialogue was as sharp as the wit.
When are we going to see Linda Moulton-Howe on the Paracast? Icculus, I myself had a brief correspondence with LMH regarding what I thought was some relevant info on the mutilation phenomenon, to which I was very politely ignored. I'm not defending that treatment, or endorsing it, but it definitely gave me the impression that a lot of the information about this topic, that you see , read or hear is the most sensational information about this topic.

At any rate, I am now itchin' to hear next weeks show.
 
As far as why the government is keeping a lid on all this... my thoughts go to two extremes:

1). They don't actually know much, and would have to admit to this publicly, which they cannot do, for what I think are fairly obvious reasons.

2). The other extreme is too dark for me to consider, much less discuss. It's just waaay too scary for me to think about.

Of course, anything is possible, the real question is: what is probable?

dB
 
No more books for now, listeners, except the last two books in the science fiction trilogy I wrote with my son, Grayson. But they're all done, except for the final edits and proofreading.

I did over 30 tech books, and that sort of soured me of ever doing that sort of thing again, in any field. But I'll never say never.
 
thefoundryman said:
Dave, it was obvious by Richard's response to your 'big-brained' and poignant analysis (on-the-fly in fact), that he was taken aback by your relevant wizardry in the field of image-analysis.
Click to expand...

See, here's the thing about that - the issue of halation is not what I'd call a deep technical one, it's more like Imaging 101. It's one of the very first things I cover when discussing lossy compression schemes with students, and the details of how DCT (Discrete Cosine Transforms) are implemented in the JPEG format get somewhat hairy, but the way in which I mentioned it is not what I'd refer to as brainy. I'm fully aware that Rich is not as versed in the technological aspects of imaging as myself, but frankly, I would hope that anyone interested in this topic takes at least a little time to familiarize themselves with some basic aspects of imaging, physics, history, psychology and the other fields that are all touched upon when discussing this topic.

dB
 
David Biedny said:
2). The other extreme is too dark for me to consider, much less discuss. It's just waaay too scary for me to think about.
Click to expand...

The first one is more probable in my view. They don't know much, haven't recovered crashed saucers, have had no contact with "them," don't know much at all except that some cases seem to indicate that non-terrestrial intelligences interact with Earth.

The second one would have to be an alien invasion scenario or a bizarre variation on that theme. Scary, indeed. One scary possibility that I wonder about has to do with the relation between Gnostic mythology and the UFO phenomenon.
 
David Biedny said:
but frankly, I would hope that anyone interested in this topic takes at least a little time to familiarize themselves with some basic aspects of imaging, physics, history, psychology and the other fields that are all touched upon when discussing this topic.dB
Click to expand...

You raise an interesting point in that there is no current curriculum offered to become a "Ufologist",(Geez I hate that term). Listening to the Paracast IS my own attempt at greater self-education on this topic. Or alternatively, let me know how much you and Gene are going to charge for tuition at the UofUFO, whenever that happens, and I'll be there.:D
 
David Biedny said:
Thanks for all the kind comments and feedback, folks, it means the world to read all your thoughts and get some supportive words. When I read the kind of thoughtful commentary that you all take the time to post, it very much reminds me why I have to keep doing this with Gene. If we don't, who will?

dB
Click to expand...

So glad to hear you say this because I adore the show. And there is no one else doing this work which is so important and necessary.

I really like Dolan's work, but at the same time it seems like he is becoming more and more susceptible to the lunatic fringe. (I was shocked to see that he even has kind things to say about the Cassiopeia cult on his website.)

This gradual slide towards absurdity appears to have happened to other researchers as well. They enter the UFO/paranormal field with their feet apparently on the ground and then, as the years go by, become increasingly wacked out and credulous. I'm sure there are many factors behind this, but my instinct is that it is not just about money and a desire not to badmouth one's colleagues.

I think that there is something about this topic itself which can be in a way dangerous or, as I think Jeff Ritzmann put it in a slightly different context, toxic, if one is not extremely careful. Gene and David are very level-headed, and in this field that is no small accomplishment. Their sensible, rational perspective is a help to many people to whom (unfortunately!) discernment doesn't come so easily.

Thanks for the show.
 
When it comes to tolerating members of the lunatic fringe with all their attendant "theories", Mr Dolan's grey basket sounds much roomier than mine will ever be.

And was it mere playfulness or a passive/aggressive barb when he stated, towards the end of the show, "Oh, have I silenced the great David Biedny?!"
It made me wonder how much anti-Biedny venom gets dripped into Dolan's ear by the ragamuffin company he chooses to keep at those conferences he chooses to attend. Or am I reading too much into this?!

And was it a deliberate decision not to quiz him on that barking book review he wrote, as mentioned elsewhere in the forum, or did the hosts merely run out of time?

Looking forward to his new book, though...I think.
 
Good show, guys. I liked the discussion of Doty and Bennewitz, in particular. So much of the UFO culture and myth, seems to have it's origins with people like Doty. I'd love to see a 60 Minutes style expose on such disinformation agents. The entire UFO history has been so tainted with frauds and disinformation, that it's hard to make sense out of any of this.
 
Hey Gen, I may be not on quite the same page as chuckleberryfinn, but I think they be referring to the concept in Gnosticism of the beings known as Archons (sorry for the weak Wikipedia write up). These were supposedly the first sentience to arise in our solar sphere, and are a race of unintentioned malevolent inorganic beings that live in the outer planets. They are supposedly an intelligence that operates in a hive mind, and some of the encounters described in Gnostic text have very.... "uncomfortable" similarities to descriptions of entities analogous to the "Grey" template, saucer visitations, disruption of mental processes/oh shit-core of your soul panic response. If you can invest the time to do some real digging it is an immensly fascinating body of text, and really does "click" with some of the high strangeness that starts to become overwhelming if you really dig into the "UFO" phenomenom
 
David Biedny said:
As far as why the government is keeping a lid on all this... my thoughts go to two extremes:
Click to expand...

First of all, I think it's important to remember that the framing of a question is going to determine the quality of the answers coming out of it.

In my opinion there is no precise universal definition of "The Government", and so when people talk to one another using this term they can be talking about *entirely* different things and not even realize it.

Is "The Government" Congress? The president? The wealthy sectors of society? Everyone with a government salary?

In my opinion, an entity called "The Government" does not exist. This would be akin to calling every educational system in the United States "The School". Sure they can be conceptually categorized together, but to imagine all the universities, montessori schools and preschools of the country as some giant unified entity universally sharing their information is just silly.

I think that most people would agree with me, but for some reason people keep using the phrase "The Government" without any further delineation, as if this phrase in itself actually means anything.

I think that one should precisely define what is meant by "The Government" when they frame a question of this sort.

I say this because I do agree that those individuals that we see on television as associated with "the government" - the president, senators, etc, are probably in the dark about this ufo scenario.

But I'm personally convinced that there exist individuals who are much more informed than we are about this matter. And these individuals DO have an influence in the governing of the United States. Much more of an influence than you or I. Therefore, are they not part of our "government"?

So does the government know or does the government not know?

I hope this helps to illustrate that sometimes the reason the answer is not forthcoming is because the wrong question is being asked.
 
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