Hey, awesome show. Thanks!
Just a couple of comments. In re to "The Day After Roswell" - Corso's (and/or Birnes') book - the alien crash itself and all that it entails:
As far as the book, in and of itself, I'm generally not much of a believer. I've said that before. The thought of Corso stumbling into the exact warehouse where the aliens were being stored, silly. Just silly. Basically, the book sets up way too many synchronistic elements similar to this occurring around Corso.
Then again, as one reads one definitely gets the impression that Colonel Phillip Corso was, indeed, a very accomplished man. So, is the book just your basic bullshit disinfo digest, containing lots of truth and lots of fiction in a soupy mess?
Too many silly points were made in the book for me to accept it at face value. Then again, I do believe that something truly wild happened at Roswell, so it's a balancing act.
Was there an alien spacecraft in Roswell? Quite possibly. Mr. Hansen mentioned in the interview a possible attack by the military on the craft. This is very compelling. It's all speculative, of course, yet entirely possible.
And as I listened to the program, my mind took it to the next level: Imagine that a meeting had been set up between the military and the aliens, but the military stabbed them in the back, and ambushed them. They never planned on allowing them to land safely. That was
never their intention. They just wanted to kill the little bastards and get at their technology, and maybe capture one of them alive, if they could.
The possibilities are endless, and endlessly fascinating. Something wild and very,very strange did occur at Roswell.
In re to the oft-mentioned back-engineering of alien spacecraft...
(Especially to David) Imagine this. Forget the laptop in the time machine...
Instead, let's say you bring an old analog (CRT) television back 200 hundred years, to 1810, and drop that off at a local scientist's hovel.
Now, they wouldn't have a clue what the purpose of the thing was (unless, of course, you told them).
The man (or woman) wouldn't be able to discern how the power supply worked, or how and why the PCB was set up the way it was with parts and bits attached all over the place, wired together, so strange, so organized and... alien...
How would the glass affect them? They would not have seen glass like that before. Would they not be interested in how it was made? They would (of course) be completely fascinated by certain aspects of the unit, the smooth, perfect glass being one, the linear perfection of the design being another.
So wouldn't they be able to take that single component and do something with it? Of course they would!
Another example: The wiring inside. They would be fascinated to see how the plastic was formed over the copper wire. In 1810, an electro-chemical telegraph was constructed in Germany. The electric light was invented right around that time.... also the electric battery... so who knows?
The transistors and capacitors inside the television would send them for a loop, but they would definitely get lots of ideas about casing and construction by admiring and studying the panels, brackets etc.
My point is, they would glean some things, and not others. They would gain
some new knowledge by studying the television not as a single unit, but as a conglomeration of discrete parts and sections. No doubt they would definitely
not be able to grasp the item as a whole, but in parts... well, ya never know how that might help them advance their scientific knowledge.
And that is how I regard the alien spacecraft in the government's collection. They know
what they are looking at (alien spacecraft), but they don't know exactly how to put the whole thing together and make it work, due to limitations in knowledge on power supplies, propulsion issues, special fuels, operational conditions, transmission issues, content, etc. Basically, they're fucking frustrated.
And who wouldn't be?
Now here's a counter-argument to my own commentary: You've talked on the show about Will Smith flying an alien craft, and how stupid that concept is, and I fully agree. I literally guffawed when I saw it in Independence Day. Now, I'm not so sure. If it's an alien craft, what limitations should we truly be placing on how difficult or hard it would be to operate for a human being? How can we know how a human being would fare in flying a freaky flying saucer? I'll tell you one thing, I'd LOVE TO GIVE IT A SHOT. Seriously.
And for anyone who has dealt for any length of time with scientists, engineers and test pilots... You know what I'm talking about. It's amazing what some of these guys and gals can do. Limitations start to fade as you sit and listen to some of these geniuses. Interesting stuff, folks.
Onwards...
Hey, that holographic computer David mentioned was SO COOL. As an IT pro myself, I thought that was incredible. Years ago I, myself, had a wicked idea. Check this out: A computer
fully based and cased in a cubic body of
water, using only the matrix of molecules in the water itself to store and pass information back and forth. The water might have to be treated with some sort of saline (or other) solution to allow a certain conductivity, but the point is, it's a biological computer. Think how far this could go once scaled up. Small container size, to bathtub size, pool size, pond, lake... oceans. Now that's a supercomputer!
The idea isn't without logic, although my capabilities are ZERO to actually go beyond a simple sci-fi-like conceptualization of the idea. If anyone is reading this and creates a computer in a bucket of water, you owe me a beer, okay?
Or maybe you can create a computer out of a bucket of beer, and we can drink it, and get drunk and smarter at the same time? Ah, the Paracast always gets me thinking. :
Yeah, this Mr. Hansen is one smart dude. Loved the episode. Might have to give it another spin on the iriver to get the full trip digested.
Have a great week, guys! And Happy New Year to the whole Paracast community.
I don't think this affects Hansen much. Although he supports Corso in a book ten years old, before some of this stuff came up, his main thesis is about journalism and the press. That's where he concentrates. Corso is only a peripheral part of that. So I don't think this hurts Hansen much at all.