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October 13, 2013 Shop Talk


wwkirk

Paranormal Adept
Good episode as usual.

Regarding your favorite ufologists, I recognized all of Gene's picks. But Chris's choices except for Ray Stanford were pretty obscure.
 
I think that may be a good thing, wwkirk, since it could be said we need some new blood in the field. I got the impression Chris was trolling for some up-and-coming researchers who aren't in the public eye but who are doing some really quality research at a grass-roots level.

Regarding a Paracast VIP program, there was a paranormal podcast broadcaster named Jim Harold who did this a while back. He started off by running just a free podcast and made the jump to a 100% full time business doing it. Some of the things he's doing that allowed him to pull off the transition are as follows.

  1. Lock down the archive episodes farther back than a year. The previous year's of episodes are free to download for anybody, but if you want podcast episodes farther back than that you need to be a VIP member.
  2. He launched 3 podcasts on top of his current, free paranormal podcast. These were podcasts specific to UFOs, ghosts and hauntings, and True Crime. They were an hour long (opposed to his normal two-hour long segments), and were only available to his VIP listeners, though his original podcast was still free.
  3. He has a website and forum specific to the VIP subscribers.
  4. He offers online training seminars and video conferences with some of his guests via Skype. Some of the online training is 'live' via Skype.
  5. He also does Skype-based round-table discussions between himself and VIP subscribers about every two months or so.
  6. He offers discounts on some paranormal books, including two he's written himself.
  7. He puts out an email newsletter with more content and beefed up specifically for VIP's
  8. His VIP pricing is $75 a year, but he offers periodic discounts at times.
I believe some of these ideas could be effective toward a ParaCast VIP program, too. I also like the dedicated YouTube.com channel for Paracast VIP subscribers.

Just a few things I thought I'd toss out to add to the pool.

J.
 
Great ideas, Jeff. I'd like to see if the network would allow us to deliver the older episodes ad-free. They are still sorta adamant on that, though.
 
  • I realize most people already know this, but for those who can't load websites using Safari, try downloading and installing Firefox.
  • I don't doubt that some UFO reports have a "closed system" explanation, particularly those reports that are hoaxes or misidentifications of known technology ( including secret projects ). However the rest, which are the ones we're interested in, are another story. Reasonable efforts have been made to assess the viability of an Earth based explanation for alien craft, and I've seen none that stand up to analysis well enough to believe that anything on Earth other than an alien base is a reasonable explanation. Sure it's possible there are secret Nazi bases in Antarctica, or an advanced subterranean civilization, but what's possible and what's reasonable are two separate issues. BTW, alternate universes aren't part of an Earth based "closed system" explanation. Alternate universes are way more "out there" than the standard ETH. It is however an intriguing alternative or to the ETH, and one doesn't have to preclude the other. They may both be concurrent realities.
  • The issue about the government not being able to keep secrets is self evident. It can't. There have been plenty of leaks about UFOs. So it's not that the secret has remained intact, it's that the evidence hasn't been made available.
  • Good luck with all your efforts to make the Paracast financially self sufficient. I hope you make millions of dollars so that I can hit you up for a research grant ;).
 
The biggest thing we're lacking now is proper sales/marketing help for the show. There are just so many hats I can wear and still do justice to each job. I've had an open offer for a sales and marketing person for a long time. One or two have offered, but quit early on. Selling is hard, and you have to be persistent and not expect quick profits.

Remember that the network doesn't pay us for their ads, and we don't share in local station income either. Other than the rare donation, our only source of income from the show is advertising. We get three minutes per hour (based on a three hour show when broadcast with news breaks), which offers plenty of openings for new advertisers, and a reasonable income opportunity for someone who wants to work at a generous commission.
 
If there is going to be a VIP programme, I would have to jump over my shadow at last and figure out how this modern credit card online payment stuff of the devil works without getting my bank account plundered. :oops:

But, nice episode. Thanks @Ed Da - ahhh, I mean Chris :p for addressing my questions, which probably only turned up during the recording.

Good to hear the psychic interview / experiment is still an option and hasn't been canceled. I'm in the minority here having an interest in this kind of stuff, but I really was looking forward to something like that. Although I have always been skeptical about psychic's claims and predictions in the media, lately, the medium research by Gary Schwartz and Julie Beischel has had me scratching my head, and watching a certain Mrs. Dubois basically recounting the last moments in the life of someone she had never known, was frankly scary.

As for premonitions, I have those a lot but fortunately they never turn out to be correct. I guess, trying to predict a tricksterish event is impossible by definition, though, because the big T is probably essentially unpredictabilty itself.
 
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The biggest thing we're lacking now is proper sales/marketing help for the show. There are just so many hats I can wear and still do justice to each job. I've had an open offer for a sales and marketing person for a long time. One or two have offered, but quit early on. Selling is hard, and you have to be persistent and not expect quick profits.

Remember that the network doesn't pay us for their ads, and we don't share in local station income either. Other than the rare donation, our only source of income from the show is advertising. We get three minutes per hour (based on a three hour show when broadcast with news breaks), which offers plenty of openings for new advertisers, and a reasonable income opportunity for someone who wants to work at a generous commission.

We're all in the same boat Gene. I often think it's too bad that a core group with all the same motives can't find a way to work together. Everyone is already so invested in captaining their own boat that what we've got instead of a unified powerhouse is a fleet of canoes and rafts without any organizational structure. We're not unlike the metaphor of the thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters who are all hoping to collectively write Shakespeare. That being said, we do have some common members here who support the show by listening and participating in the Paracast forum. And I keep paddling my raft along hoping to catch a lucky break.

I've considered asking for charitable donations, but I have a hard time rationalizing spending charity money on the UFO problem when there are so many other more worthy causes. There are still kids out there who are homeless and starving and dying of freaking leprosy. How can I rationalize spending charity money on UFOs, when it would be better spent on saving them? That's why instead of panning for donations to buy stuff for USI, I offer people the opportunity to buy stuff for themselves or others via our catalog. I don't feel nearly as guilty about minding the store so people can spend money on themselves as I would taking charity money.

Still I suppose that if I were approached by someone who of their own accord really wanted to help out the cause, I wouldn't turn them down either. But what are the chances of that? Practically none. So here we are back at square one. And what would we do with a million dollars anyway Gene? Assuming it can even be done, getting the real goods would cost far more. The most realistic thing we can do is dream of the day when all those who know UFOs are real can find a way to come forward and stand together with a unified voice, and I mean everybody, not just civilians.
 
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I hope everyone will excuse my lack of finesse. I'm new to forums in general. I'm Bill Modlin from Hendersonville, NC. VERY recent member. I've been listening with great interest and it seems a constant thread of conversation on the shows of late is the lamentation, especially on Chris's part, of the lack of novelty in the presentations at conferences. Indeed, this is something that permeates ufology in general. Endlessly revisiting old cases, and simply investigating and cataloging new ones has gotten us little. I think it's time we started hunting them down. I have thought for some time the way forward is through what I call ( and I'm sure I'm not the first and only) observation through technical means. For example, many of the videos from the shuttles and the ISS that showed anomalous objects showed these objects not at the level of the orbiting vehicles ( LEO, approx 200-250 miles) but much lower, in the very upper atmosphere. If junior high kids can go there with Sponge Bob, it seems to me we can go there at night with a night vision camera. At 100,000 feet there should be nothing just flitting around. If there is, now you've got something. And while this could easily become another opportunity for cretins like the Brothers El Jerko, it's relative ease and expense of replication ( I figure $500, unless it all ends up at the bottom of a lake) is enough of a window of affordability that it would in a sense be democratized. ( Bobby, whats your science project? ) And a little further up the food chain, Peter Davenport has written a rather interesting paper on passive radar. Seems there's a string of transmitters across the south called The Fence. Ostensibly this is used to track space junk out to 30,000 miles. A bit far for that, don't you think? Perhaps some receivers could be cobbled together to use these or other signals ( clear channel radio stations ) for their unintended ( or maybe not ) purpose. Once results are achieved, if one starts on the bottom rung of academia and you work your way up, it may very well be possible to eventually woo someone like Kaku, Musgrave of even Tyson who not only have impeccable scientific backgrounds, but also a familiarity in the public arena. PS Went to Greensboro symposium. Totally reignited my interest. Solid reality, no nonsense except for this scruffy English chap. His tall tales were not Good.
 
PPS
Gene, please consider having Dr. Alexander Wendt as a guest on the Paracast. His presentation at Greensboro was amazing. Read his paper " Sovereignty and the UFO" in Political Theory, vol.36, no.4. JUST AMAZING!!!
 
I hope everyone will excuse my lack of finesse. I'm new to forums in general. I'm Bill Modlin from Hendersonville, NC. VERY recent member. I've been listening with great interest and it seems a constant thread of conversation on the shows of late is the lamentation, especially on Chris's part, of the lack of novelty in the presentations at conferences. Indeed, this is something that permeates ufology in general. Endlessly revisiting old cases, and simply investigating and cataloging new ones has gotten us little. I think it's time we started hunting them down.

I have thought for some time the way forward is through what I call ( and I'm sure I'm not the first and only) observation through technical means. For example, many of the videos from the shuttles and the ISS that showed anomalous objects showed these objects not at the level of the orbiting vehicles ( LEO, approx 200-250 miles) but much lower, in the very upper atmosphere. If junior high kids can go there with Sponge Bob, it seems to me we can go there at night with a night vision camera. At 100,000 feet there should be nothing just flitting around. If there is, now you've got something.

And while this could easily become another opportunity for cretins like the Brothers El Jerko, it's relative ease and expense of replication ( I figure $500, unless it all ends up at the bottom of a lake) is enough of a window of affordability that it would in a sense be democratized. ( Bobby, whats your science project? ) And a little further up the food chain, Peter Davenport has written a rather interesting paper on passive radar. Seems there's a string of transmitters across the south called The Fence. Ostensibly this is used to track space junk out to 30,000 miles.

A bit far for that, don't you think? Perhaps some receivers could be cobbled together to use these or other signals ( clear channel radio stations ) for their unintended ( or maybe not ) purpose. Once results are achieved, if one starts on the bottom rung of academia and you work your way up, it may very well be possible to eventually woo someone like Kaku, Musgrave of even Tyson who not only have impeccable scientific backgrounds, but also a familiarity in the public arena. PS Went to Greensboro symposium. Totally reignited my interest. Solid reality, no nonsense except for this scruffy English chap. His tall tales were not Good.

Welcome, and thanks for posting your ideas. A friendly tip to start: Breaking up your posts into bite sized chunks like I did above makes them easier to read through.

The space mission videos of what have been claimed to be anomalous or alien craft ( UFOs ), have to my knowledge, all proven contentious because they don't provide enough information to determine what the objects or artifacts are. Also all the videos I've seen have been shown to have possible mundane explanations. There have however been some non-video eyewitness accounts that are more interesting. It has been alleged that clear films do exist but are being withheld from the public for unknown reasons.

On the idea of getting night vision gear and pointing it up toward the sky. The problem is that after a certain distance ( a few hundred yards at most ) the optics focus out to infinity, which means that unless the object flies between the device and an object of known distance, there isn't any way to know with reasonable certainty how high up it is. High powered telescopes focus at greater distances but their field of view is very small and nearly useless as sky watching tools.

Davenport's passive radar idea is interesting, but earlier this year I posted an article about a civilian guy who is doing it already, and no less than with Space Command's Space Fence. We've exchanged a few emails and he does have some data that includes unidentified returns, however because of the way it works, it's still difficult to determine exactly what the objects are. Most identification is done by comparing known objects to the times that they should show up on the fence and sifting out the anomalies. So what we're left are anomalous returns, which alone aren't sufficient enough to assume that they're alien craft ( UFOs ). My post with the link: https://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/us-space-fence-a-victim-of-sequestration.13788/#post-167329

So what might be done? Chris' idea about getting specialized 24/7 monitoring gear up at UFO hotspots is probably the most workable idea, and it still costs a lot, plus there's all the man-hours required to evaluate the data. Then there's the whole equipment malfunction problem that always seems to occur right at critical moments, as if they ( whatever they are ) know exactly what you're doing and will not allow you to play the game that way.

Ultimately, I've become increasingly of the view that hunting the holy grail of valid scientific evidence for UFOs isn't the wisest expenditure of resources. Not that I'm knocking anyone's efforts, but let's face it, many of us already know alien craft are real because we've seen them in no uncertain terms. If the skeptics refuse to believe, then so what? Why do we need to please them so badly anyway? Isn't the knowledge that we already know not good enough for us to move on to the next step? IMO that's where the real problem is now. What is that step? Even if someone gets some really decent video, what's the point? To keep it locked up like Stanford or whoever has these alleged alien slides is doing?
 
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Perhaps I didn
't make myself clear. The nightvision camera would be sent to 100,000 ft via balloon, not mearly pointed into the sky. And as for the fellow using The Fence, good on him! Thats what we need. We need Chris's efforts too. As Chris said we shouldn't buttonhole ourselves. Hopefully this practical, thecnical work will yeild results. In time perhaps this will be noted by those with some wealth who for their own reasons would be willing to fund these efforts. If you could go, for example to a firm one-worlder and ask him or her "Would you be willing to responsibly fund an effort that could set into motion a chain of events that could lead to the end of the nation-state?" they might just say yes.
 
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On that thought, we should not underestimate the sheer power of this. If the reality of this, not just the "belief", but the reality of it were to become firm in the collective consiousness of the planet, what would happen next would be very difficult to predict. This should n ot deter, however. In the end, i belive the outcome will be positive.
 
I will say the show overall was not bad.
To those who say the secrets cannot be kept, you have a lack of knowledge.Secrets are kept, and never see the light of day. I think most people who say that have never worked in areas of the DOD, DOE.
 
A secret of this sort would involve thousands of people. Even if they are compartmentalized and only know a small part of the picture, you are dealing with over six decades and thousands and thousands of people. The chances that nobody will come forth and spill the beans are slim to none. Somewhere along the line, you would have seen a credible whistle blower without enough facts to blow it wide open. I don't mean Philip Corso; I mean credible.
 
We must at some point, even on as grand a scale as a planet, move on. Did Henry Ford fret over the fate of the blacksmiths?
Ford may not be such a good example. I watched a show that portrayed him as a rather ruthless authoritarian corporate fascist bent on maintaining personal ownership and control of his private empire. That's not to say he didn't accomplish things or wasn't an innovator. Just that accomplishment and innovation can take place under a different system.
 
A secret of this sort would involve thousands of people. Even if they are compartmentalized and only know a small part of the picture, you are dealing with over six decades and thousands and thousands of people. The chances that nobody will come forth and spill the beans are slim to none. Somewhere along the line, you would have seen a credible whistle blower without enough facts to blow it wide open. I don't mean Philip Corso; I mean credible.
I guess that this question revolves primarily around what the "secret" actually is. Is it an alien craft and occupants in the possession of the military? Is it governmental infiltration by alien agents? Is it gun camera footage, radar records and other types of detection data? Is it eyewitness accounts by military and government personnel? Hard evidence isn't something people can easily walk out of secure areas with, especially if it's the size of an alien craft. Films and records are probably locked up inside layers of secured areas, possibly even in vaults. Assuming they exist, I don't think it's reasonable to think that thousands of people have known with certainty that they are there, let alone have had access to them.

Personally, I think Corso's book is largely disinformation or perhaps a mix of fact and docufiction. However there have been other leaks by astronauts and pilots. Plus there have been the declassified documents from Blue Book. I think Ruppelt was credible and his book is underestimated in terms of its significance. It not only tells of military encounters, but tells how a good number of insiders including commanders of air bases believed that flaying saucers were real, not to mention the Top Secret Estimate of the Situation that he held in his own hands. There's also the insider source that Howard Blum talks about who revealed that UFOs are tracked by Space Command. There's Donna Hare who reportedly saw untouched photos from satellites that had UFOs in them, there's President Carter's sighting on public record, there were Keyhoes's sources, and the list goes on and on and on and now includes foreign governments and military people as well. What more do we need? In terms of information, it's been leaking like a freaking sieve for decades. The so called "secret" has been out for a long time. The problem is verifiability in the face of official denial.
 
Once again Mr Steinberg, they have been thousands and thousands people working in DOE and DOD that never divulge any secrets. My grandparents work at Oak Ridge national Lab. They never spoke as to what they did there. They worked there from 44-1971. I don't think you understand
 
A single example doesn't demonstrate that it must always be that way. Secrets are revealed — eventually. Especially one as momentous as that which reveals the existence of an alien spacecraft having crashed on our planet.
 
I enjoyed hearing some of the info around Stalking the Herd - being able to make big claims firmly is what does advance the discussion, and it seems like Chris' have to do more with terrestrial agents than any off planet point of origin. That's something to work with. There's been a dirh of creative, big ideas in the field. More big claims from the present, and less ancient paradigm archeology is what is needed to get some momentum going.

Unfortunately I didn't take too many highlights from this episode; maybe too much of the UFO discussion has been talked out? I would have liked more in depth discussion around recent compelling cases of the last decade as well as a look at the many debunkings of famous photos and what's left in terms of best cases to build scenarios around.

There's a real undercurrent of skepticism around the source of the UFO phenomenon present in both our hosts. I was intrigued by O'Brien's sense of optimism around the notion of being open minded and available to having an experience. I'd like that thought probed more, as what's the line between being too willing to believe and holding onto healthy skepticism? Maybe if we are too open we are more likely to see Jesus' image burned into the toast? There have also been cases where the disbelieving skeptic has their life reoriented by what they saw.

And that's really the only other avenue of pursuit, how people have been changed by their experience and what have the effects been on society regarding the UFO narrative. I agree with Gene's comment above, that crashing secrets that originate from outside our world would be hard to hide from history. However, secrets of the state do seem to have their own way of concealment and so it would not surprise me to know that many of the really convincing cases of the last 20 years or more all belong to the realm of state sponsored craft - military industrial secrets, nothing exta-special, just human ingenuity and imagination at work.
 
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