THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
August 31, 2014
www.theparacast.com
25 Years of Canadian UFO Reports Explored on The Paracast
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, the Boost Radio Network, the IRN Internet Radio Network, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
Why You Should Donate to The Paracast: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough to pay your humble hosts decent wages. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network or local stations. So we hope you're able to help fill the gap, if you can, to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch and utility bills. No contribution is too small (or too large
. It’s easy to send a donation. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. Or use the Donate link on our forums, at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. You can also send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.
Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! In the summer of 2010, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. But we need your help to add additional affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact on your behalf. We can't do this alone, and if you succeed in convincing your local station to carry the show, we'll reward you with one of our special T-shirts, and other goodies. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!
Please Visit Our Online Store: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and an expanded collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt now featuring our brand new logo, just pay a visit to our online store at The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We also offer a complete lineup of other premium merchandise for your family, your friends and your business contacts.
About The Paracast: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host and acclaimed field investigator Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Explore 25 years of UFO sightings in Canada with long-time investigator Chris Rutkowski. He and his colleagues have accumulated a huge archive containing some 15,000 UFO cases in Canada. The new survey covers the years 1989 through 2013. When you check the report at his Ufology Research site, you'll notice that the number of sightings increased in 2012 before settling down to a somewhat lower, but still historically high, level in 2013. Says his bio: "Chris Rutkowski, BSc, MEd, is a Canadian science writer and educator, with a background in astronomy but with a passion for teaching science concepts to children and adults. Since the mid-1970s, he also has been studying reports of UFOs and writing about his investigations and research."
Chris O’Brien’s Site: http://www.ourstrangeplanet.com
Chris Rutkowski’s Blog: Ufology Research
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. We recently completed a major update that makes our community easier to navigate, and social network friendly.
Not Every UFO is Strange
By Gene Steinberg
In last week’s commentary, I discussed the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. Different people can observe the same event, yet their recollections won’t be the same. How much they vary depends on the situation, and surely something unexpected, sometimes frightening, will present less consistent results.
The best UFO case is the one where a number of witnesses, unrelated to each other, deliver a reasonable cross-section of testimony to get a fair idea of what really happened. Obviously people who know each other, who may have compared notes, will end up tainting their recollection of what transpired. It’s always possible details will be altered to present a consistent story, regardless of what they actually remembered.
At the same time, it’s clear that most reports of strange objects aren’t really unknowns. Back in the days of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, their final report indicated 701 unknowns.
The key is, of course, what those unidentified cases might represent. One excuse given by the officials at Project Blue Book was that, if enough information was available, they’d explain all of those unknowns. But that’s a bit of double-talk, since there was already a special category for reports without sufficient information to reach a conclusion.
In any case, what this means is that, if you see something really strange, there’s a strong possibility it’s really something quite mundane. But the more details that seem alien to our experience, the greater the possibility that you have seen something that can’t be so easily explained.
Most UFO reports are simply lights in the sky that can be any of a number of things. These would probably fit into the “insufficient information” category, unless you could specifically point to a conventional aircraft or a planet or star being in the area where the light or lights were seen. Strange feats of maneuverability, pinpoint turns, and extraordinary speeds might take these lights closer to the unknown category.
When someone sees an unknown object up close, maybe a few hundred feet or a few dozen feet away, with sufficient light to pick out the shape, the size, and other clearly defined details, all bets are off. This is a core of the UFO mystery that continues to defy explanation.
As I have said before, the so-called flying saucer debunkers will simply claim the witnesses were lying, or were so confused as to attribute unknown characteristics to something really conventional. Maybe the object following them in their motor vehicle was just a planet, and it’s all an optical illusion.
But mistaking conventional objects for something strange happens very often. I can see why the skeptics want to paint the subject with a broad brush and be done with it. If UFOs are real, the implications are extremely difficult to confront. Whether spaceships or something else about which we still do not understand, we are faced with a mystery with potentially serious implications to our entire way of life.
Certainly we all know how relatively primitive societies on Earth were destroyed when more advanced visitors made their presence known, or decided to insert themselves into the action. When Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, and his writers conceived a “Prime Directive” for advanced alien civilizations, there was simple logic involved.
Still, the Job One in investigating UFOs is to get rid of the IFOs, the sightings that are readily explained. Reports that just don’t contain enough information to go on should also be set aside. There’s no time to waste.
But the sightings that contain enough data from which to make a decision, particularly if they involve multiple witnesses who are not connected to one another as friends or relatives, cry out for serious investigation.
It’s a mistake to assume the unexplained UFOs are alien, although many of you no doubt feel that way. The same is true for interdimensional visitors, time travelers, or breakaway civilizations. We really have no proof of any of these theories, but when the evidence seems to point to one or more of these sources, it would certainly make sense to attempt to take that evidence to its natural conclusion.
At the same time, if all those unexplained cases, or the vast majority of them, appear to have conventional causes after all possibilities are fairly examined, so be it. Indeed, the debunkers have had over 60 years to prove nothing strange is going on, and they have failed at the task. It doesn’t help that they ignore uncomfortable facts in a report, distort them, or claim the witnesses are mistaken or lying.
After all these years, I do think something strange is going on. But I won’t make the final leap into reaching a conclusion that I cannot prove. So while I don’t dismiss the possibility of an extraterrestrial solution, the fact remains that we don’t have the final answers.
I’m also concerned about the fact that, even after a sighting is shown to be the result of a conventional source, or outright fakery, some people in the UFO field just won’t listen. They ignore the nasty truth that the case has been explained, or, after a few years, they resurrect the story to give it more play with their supporters.
Yet the same is true in the world of politics. We have statements, half-truths, that have been exposed again and again by the fact checkers, but they are still repeated year after year as if nothing has changed. I even wonder sometimes whether you can believe a history book, any history book, since we cannot even agree what happened an hour ago, let alone a few decades or a few hundred years ago.
Or maybe our entire picture of what happened to our society, and how things have changed over the years, is entirely wrong. Wouldn’t that be a surprising development? But I do see why time travel, and the means to record what one sees and hears, would be the best way to focus on past events with some level of accuracy. That assumes, though, that time travel is even possible, but that’s way beyond the scope of this discussion. Besides, we could always say the recorded historical segment was edited, or deliberately taken out of context.
Copyright 1999-2014 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
August 31, 2014
www.theparacast.com
25 Years of Canadian UFO Reports Explored on The Paracast
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, the Boost Radio Network, the IRN Internet Radio Network, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
Why You Should Donate to The Paracast: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough to pay your humble hosts decent wages. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network or local stations. So we hope you're able to help fill the gap, if you can, to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch and utility bills. No contribution is too small (or too large
. It’s easy to send a donation. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. Or use the Donate link on our forums, at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. You can also send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! In the summer of 2010, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. But we need your help to add additional affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact on your behalf. We can't do this alone, and if you succeed in convincing your local station to carry the show, we'll reward you with one of our special T-shirts, and other goodies. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!
Please Visit Our Online Store: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and an expanded collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt now featuring our brand new logo, just pay a visit to our online store at The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We also offer a complete lineup of other premium merchandise for your family, your friends and your business contacts.
About The Paracast: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host and acclaimed field investigator Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Explore 25 years of UFO sightings in Canada with long-time investigator Chris Rutkowski. He and his colleagues have accumulated a huge archive containing some 15,000 UFO cases in Canada. The new survey covers the years 1989 through 2013. When you check the report at his Ufology Research site, you'll notice that the number of sightings increased in 2012 before settling down to a somewhat lower, but still historically high, level in 2013. Says his bio: "Chris Rutkowski, BSc, MEd, is a Canadian science writer and educator, with a background in astronomy but with a passion for teaching science concepts to children and adults. Since the mid-1970s, he also has been studying reports of UFOs and writing about his investigations and research."
Chris O’Brien’s Site: http://www.ourstrangeplanet.com
Chris Rutkowski’s Blog: Ufology Research
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. We recently completed a major update that makes our community easier to navigate, and social network friendly.
Not Every UFO is Strange
By Gene Steinberg
In last week’s commentary, I discussed the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. Different people can observe the same event, yet their recollections won’t be the same. How much they vary depends on the situation, and surely something unexpected, sometimes frightening, will present less consistent results.
The best UFO case is the one where a number of witnesses, unrelated to each other, deliver a reasonable cross-section of testimony to get a fair idea of what really happened. Obviously people who know each other, who may have compared notes, will end up tainting their recollection of what transpired. It’s always possible details will be altered to present a consistent story, regardless of what they actually remembered.
At the same time, it’s clear that most reports of strange objects aren’t really unknowns. Back in the days of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, their final report indicated 701 unknowns.
The key is, of course, what those unidentified cases might represent. One excuse given by the officials at Project Blue Book was that, if enough information was available, they’d explain all of those unknowns. But that’s a bit of double-talk, since there was already a special category for reports without sufficient information to reach a conclusion.
In any case, what this means is that, if you see something really strange, there’s a strong possibility it’s really something quite mundane. But the more details that seem alien to our experience, the greater the possibility that you have seen something that can’t be so easily explained.
Most UFO reports are simply lights in the sky that can be any of a number of things. These would probably fit into the “insufficient information” category, unless you could specifically point to a conventional aircraft or a planet or star being in the area where the light or lights were seen. Strange feats of maneuverability, pinpoint turns, and extraordinary speeds might take these lights closer to the unknown category.
When someone sees an unknown object up close, maybe a few hundred feet or a few dozen feet away, with sufficient light to pick out the shape, the size, and other clearly defined details, all bets are off. This is a core of the UFO mystery that continues to defy explanation.
As I have said before, the so-called flying saucer debunkers will simply claim the witnesses were lying, or were so confused as to attribute unknown characteristics to something really conventional. Maybe the object following them in their motor vehicle was just a planet, and it’s all an optical illusion.
But mistaking conventional objects for something strange happens very often. I can see why the skeptics want to paint the subject with a broad brush and be done with it. If UFOs are real, the implications are extremely difficult to confront. Whether spaceships or something else about which we still do not understand, we are faced with a mystery with potentially serious implications to our entire way of life.
Certainly we all know how relatively primitive societies on Earth were destroyed when more advanced visitors made their presence known, or decided to insert themselves into the action. When Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, and his writers conceived a “Prime Directive” for advanced alien civilizations, there was simple logic involved.
Still, the Job One in investigating UFOs is to get rid of the IFOs, the sightings that are readily explained. Reports that just don’t contain enough information to go on should also be set aside. There’s no time to waste.
But the sightings that contain enough data from which to make a decision, particularly if they involve multiple witnesses who are not connected to one another as friends or relatives, cry out for serious investigation.
It’s a mistake to assume the unexplained UFOs are alien, although many of you no doubt feel that way. The same is true for interdimensional visitors, time travelers, or breakaway civilizations. We really have no proof of any of these theories, but when the evidence seems to point to one or more of these sources, it would certainly make sense to attempt to take that evidence to its natural conclusion.
At the same time, if all those unexplained cases, or the vast majority of them, appear to have conventional causes after all possibilities are fairly examined, so be it. Indeed, the debunkers have had over 60 years to prove nothing strange is going on, and they have failed at the task. It doesn’t help that they ignore uncomfortable facts in a report, distort them, or claim the witnesses are mistaken or lying.
After all these years, I do think something strange is going on. But I won’t make the final leap into reaching a conclusion that I cannot prove. So while I don’t dismiss the possibility of an extraterrestrial solution, the fact remains that we don’t have the final answers.
I’m also concerned about the fact that, even after a sighting is shown to be the result of a conventional source, or outright fakery, some people in the UFO field just won’t listen. They ignore the nasty truth that the case has been explained, or, after a few years, they resurrect the story to give it more play with their supporters.
Yet the same is true in the world of politics. We have statements, half-truths, that have been exposed again and again by the fact checkers, but they are still repeated year after year as if nothing has changed. I even wonder sometimes whether you can believe a history book, any history book, since we cannot even agree what happened an hour ago, let alone a few decades or a few hundred years ago.
Or maybe our entire picture of what happened to our society, and how things have changed over the years, is entirely wrong. Wouldn’t that be a surprising development? But I do see why time travel, and the means to record what one sees and hears, would be the best way to focus on past events with some level of accuracy. That assumes, though, that time travel is even possible, but that’s way beyond the scope of this discussion. Besides, we could always say the recorded historical segment was edited, or deliberately taken out of context.
Copyright 1999-2014 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!