THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
July 26, 2015
www.theparacast.com
We Present a Special Shop Talk/Listener Roundtable Episode of 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.
Announcing The Paracast+: We have another radio show, and for a low monthly or annual subscription fee, you will receive access to After The Paracast, plus a higher-quality version of The Paracast without, the network ads, and chat rooms. NEW! We’ve added an RSS feed for fast updates of the latest episodes, and The Paracast+ video channel is coming soon. For more information about our premium package, please visit: Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio.
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: Gene and Chris present a special shop talk/listener roundtable episode featuring Don Ecker, of the "Dark Matters" radio show, and forum regulars Curt Collins and Goggs Mackay. The bill of fare is wide-ranging, including the state of the UFO field, disclosure, and a major emphasis on lunar mysteries. Why did we stop landing people on the moon? The discussion will also include focus on other solar system mysteries, and the discovery of "Earth 2.0," Kepler-452b, a larger "Goldilocks" planet that's approximately 1,400 light years away from Earth.
Chris O’Brien’s Site: Our Strange Planet
Dark Matters Radio: Dark Matters Radio - Downloads | CyberStationUSA On Demand Programming
Curt Collins Blog: Blue Blurry Lines
Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers on July 26: Gene and Chris talk shop about a wide variety of topics. Chris will offer an update on the UFO researcher Ray Stanford’s ongoing research, and when he might reveal what he has discovered. You’ll also hear an update on the San Luis Valley Camera Project. Gene and Chris will also talk about our collective reality and the way out concept that we are, together, expanding our reality to encompass our discoveries about the university. And what about the recent discovery of an exoplanet that is being called “Earth 2.0”? Are we truly getting closer to finding evidence of ET, or is Earth the only inhabited planet in the universe? If ET was here, would the presence involve AI rather than physical beings? What about traveling to Earth in a city-sized spaceship and landing in an undiscovered location on Earth, or perhaps the far side of the moon? What about the theory of a closed system, in which UFOs are really from Earth, that they coexist with us? We’ll also present some paranormal news updates involving the discovery of what some claim to be a hybrid human/alien body, and recent Bigfoot sightings.
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.
About Just Getting Along
By Gene Steinberg
Put two people in a room and you’re probably going to have a debate. It doesn’t matter if those two people are friends, family or total strangers. As soon as they start talking, there are apt to be areas of disagreement.
Now take someone you never see, who might not even be using a real name, and things can go from bad to worse.
It’s very common in the online world, where people can go about their business being almost anonymous – well except for the search engine that may be tracking their every move of course – and suddenly there’s the feeling of power. Some people decide they can become anyone they want, say anything they want without consequences.
Of course, it doesn’t take the feeling of anonymity to cause people to argue about our way out world. That was going on long before anyone of us were involved in discovering the curious world of the paranormal. Consider the debates among Mac and PC users and you will see examples of excess emotion, only heightened if it happens online. And don’t forget the arguments over using an iPhone or an Android phone.
My online pursuits started in the early 1980s, when I had access to an office personal computer that was primarily used to translate files for use in a prepress studio. Briefly, we’d take files created in a word processor and convert them to the custom language of our phototypesetting microcomputers. This all happened before the desktop publishing revolution, but I won’t get into that, since it recalls the original Mac versus PC debate.
My employers set up a costly CompuServe account (usually $24 per hour during peak hours in the early 1980s) with which to communicate with clients. I used the occasional downtime to visit the discussion forums, though I did not, as yet, consider participating. I was using a company account and just lurking. But at least the boss didn’t complain over the high bills for the service, and I tried hard not to abuse the privilege.
My online experiences would eventually become an important part of my working life.
In October, 1989, I received a small package from a company known as America Online. I had been moving more and more of my workload to my home and my Macintosh computer system. Compared to CompuServe, which I rarely used, AOL was cheap, a “mere” $4.00 per hour. I was tempted to get involved in forums about flying saucers, sci-fi and, of course, the Apple Macintosh.
Being a regular participant in the latter won me a free account from AOL’s producer team, and it didn’t take long before I became a paid forum moderator. I had to assume the role of a benevolent dictator because some members got a little over-enthusiastic with their emotional verbiage. Having the power to remove a message or ban an offending member, I took appropriate action.
Knowing they were being watched, most participants remained on their best behavior. But some chose to bend the rules, daring me to respond.
If it was freedom you wanted, however, there was Usenet, the original online forum system. Most of those Usenet forums were not moderated, hence you could pretty much say anything you wanted without blowback; well, except for being attacked, or flamed, by others.
In the early years, AOL blocked access to the wider online world, but eventually provided it in a streamlined format, with simple point and click interfaces. So I scoped out a few forums with topics of interest and hung out a while. Sometimes I’d even participate, but not as eagerly as others.
I did run into a few online cliques along the way. One consisted of people who, having too much time on their hands, would flame AOL. As an actual AOL employee, I’d sometimes respond to blatant factual errors or falsehoods. Their responses were almost universally vicious. It was all a game to them.
One even berated me for my refusal to use abusive language. “Here’s the deal. I flame you and you flame me.” While I wouldn’t abide by the program. I attempted to debate on the basis of facts and logic, but some of those anonymous posters were just relentless. To them it was just a game.
In the late 1990s, my teenaged son, Grayson and I began collaborating on a series of sci-fi novels. Grayson and one of his young friends decided they wanted to get the word out about what we were doing and so they posted a few messages on several Usenet-based sci-fi forums.
One of those forums catered to budding writers, most of whom followed a certain fantasy author that I shall not name. I was not a reader of that person’s books.
Now our novel didn’t have high literary pretentions. It was first and foremost space opera, although we weren’t above adding social commentary.
While some devoted sci-fi fans look down on space opera, it has become the most popular sub-genre. Consider “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” as famous examples, and don’t forget the various “Stargate” shows for cable TV’s Syfy channel.
Well, Grayson and I had some intriguing ideas, but we were also learning, and the environment in that Usenet forum was downright hostile. It got so bad that my agent, someone highly respected in the sci-fi universe, posted a message saying, in essence, “grow up.” Well, that put the argument to bed, and Grayson and I went elsewhere.
Usenet is yesterday’s news, but online forums have proliferated. Using free or fairly low-cost commercial software, anyone with a web site can set up a place for discussions. Sometimes it’s limited to a “Comments” section on a blog, but a forum allows for a wider range of discussions, essentially in a loose format where you can engage in a virtually unlimited range of topics. Well, depending on the limits imposed in a particular forum of course.
And don’t forget Facebook and Twitter.
The Paracast Community Forums went live nine years ago, and with nearly a quarter-million posts, it has become an extremely popular online watering hole for discussions about UFOs and all sorts of paranormal pursuits. We also get into politics, and one of the most popular threads – or topics – is about whether humans are responsible for global warming.
Let me tell you that it gets hot and heavy sometimes.
Several volunteer forum moderators help us keep things going. Again, we take a benevolent dictator approach, which means we don’t mind vigorous debates, and sometimes a little “blue” language, but if members go overboard with their arguments, we will take steps to shut it down. We don’t like to censor, but we have the “power” to edit or remove an offensive message.
Sometimes we issue a warning, but we can ban a member for a short cooling off period, or permanently. We’d rather not resort to the latter step, but it happens from time to time when things really get out of hand. We do have a set of Terms and Rules, posted in the forum, which sets the guidelines.
As with Usenet, some of the worst offenders will, to some degree, attempt to take advantage of anonymity in our forums. They use a pseudonym, and even if the name is real, it’s not that you see the person or can confront them directly.
Even when the debaters observe the rules of the road, you often wonder whether they’d resort to fisticuffs if they actually meet each other. Yet when that happens, without the shield of anonymity, they will usually behave. Some of the most blatant flame-throwing posters are really nice when you actually talk to them in person. I suppose it becomes a role-playing game to some of these people.
As you might imagine, the cliques we see in the forums mirror what you see among people who are interested in the world of the unknown. The emotions are understandable, and those of you blessed – or cursed – with one or more personal experiences clearly have a stake in the discussions.
The excesses in such debates – and the antics in which some people engage – clearly has soured some people on admitting they are actually involved in these fields. More and more people will regard being identified with Ufology, for example, as a pejorative. It’s not pretty. While the feuds have persisted for decades, the relative freedom of the online world may have made matters worse.
The beginning and end of it is this: When you post in a forum, consider for a moment how you’d treat someone if you met them face-to-face, or on the phone. Try to treat them with the same respect when you respond to a forum message. If you are attacked, I hope you will disagree agreeably.
I know it’s hard. I’ve been at the other end of attacks for years, but I’ve never used vulgar language, and I try to keep the personal references to a minimum, although it’s really hard sometimes.
There’s enough bad behavior in our world. Can’t we just try to get along?
Copyright 1999-2015 The Paracast LLC. 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!
July 26, 2015
www.theparacast.com
We Present a Special Shop Talk/Listener Roundtable Episode of 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.
Announcing The Paracast+: We have another radio show, and for a low monthly or annual subscription fee, you will receive access to After The Paracast, plus a higher-quality version of The Paracast without, the network ads, and chat rooms. NEW! We’ve added an RSS feed for fast updates of the latest episodes, and The Paracast+ video channel is coming soon. For more information about our premium package, please visit: Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio.
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: Gene and Chris present a special shop talk/listener roundtable episode featuring Don Ecker, of the "Dark Matters" radio show, and forum regulars Curt Collins and Goggs Mackay. The bill of fare is wide-ranging, including the state of the UFO field, disclosure, and a major emphasis on lunar mysteries. Why did we stop landing people on the moon? The discussion will also include focus on other solar system mysteries, and the discovery of "Earth 2.0," Kepler-452b, a larger "Goldilocks" planet that's approximately 1,400 light years away from Earth.
Chris O’Brien’s Site: Our Strange Planet
Dark Matters Radio: Dark Matters Radio - Downloads | CyberStationUSA On Demand Programming
Curt Collins Blog: Blue Blurry Lines
Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers on July 26: Gene and Chris talk shop about a wide variety of topics. Chris will offer an update on the UFO researcher Ray Stanford’s ongoing research, and when he might reveal what he has discovered. You’ll also hear an update on the San Luis Valley Camera Project. Gene and Chris will also talk about our collective reality and the way out concept that we are, together, expanding our reality to encompass our discoveries about the university. And what about the recent discovery of an exoplanet that is being called “Earth 2.0”? Are we truly getting closer to finding evidence of ET, or is Earth the only inhabited planet in the universe? If ET was here, would the presence involve AI rather than physical beings? What about traveling to Earth in a city-sized spaceship and landing in an undiscovered location on Earth, or perhaps the far side of the moon? What about the theory of a closed system, in which UFOs are really from Earth, that they coexist with us? We’ll also present some paranormal news updates involving the discovery of what some claim to be a hybrid human/alien body, and recent Bigfoot sightings.
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.
About Just Getting Along
By Gene Steinberg
Put two people in a room and you’re probably going to have a debate. It doesn’t matter if those two people are friends, family or total strangers. As soon as they start talking, there are apt to be areas of disagreement.
Now take someone you never see, who might not even be using a real name, and things can go from bad to worse.
It’s very common in the online world, where people can go about their business being almost anonymous – well except for the search engine that may be tracking their every move of course – and suddenly there’s the feeling of power. Some people decide they can become anyone they want, say anything they want without consequences.
Of course, it doesn’t take the feeling of anonymity to cause people to argue about our way out world. That was going on long before anyone of us were involved in discovering the curious world of the paranormal. Consider the debates among Mac and PC users and you will see examples of excess emotion, only heightened if it happens online. And don’t forget the arguments over using an iPhone or an Android phone.
My online pursuits started in the early 1980s, when I had access to an office personal computer that was primarily used to translate files for use in a prepress studio. Briefly, we’d take files created in a word processor and convert them to the custom language of our phototypesetting microcomputers. This all happened before the desktop publishing revolution, but I won’t get into that, since it recalls the original Mac versus PC debate.
My employers set up a costly CompuServe account (usually $24 per hour during peak hours in the early 1980s) with which to communicate with clients. I used the occasional downtime to visit the discussion forums, though I did not, as yet, consider participating. I was using a company account and just lurking. But at least the boss didn’t complain over the high bills for the service, and I tried hard not to abuse the privilege.
My online experiences would eventually become an important part of my working life.
In October, 1989, I received a small package from a company known as America Online. I had been moving more and more of my workload to my home and my Macintosh computer system. Compared to CompuServe, which I rarely used, AOL was cheap, a “mere” $4.00 per hour. I was tempted to get involved in forums about flying saucers, sci-fi and, of course, the Apple Macintosh.
Being a regular participant in the latter won me a free account from AOL’s producer team, and it didn’t take long before I became a paid forum moderator. I had to assume the role of a benevolent dictator because some members got a little over-enthusiastic with their emotional verbiage. Having the power to remove a message or ban an offending member, I took appropriate action.
Knowing they were being watched, most participants remained on their best behavior. But some chose to bend the rules, daring me to respond.
If it was freedom you wanted, however, there was Usenet, the original online forum system. Most of those Usenet forums were not moderated, hence you could pretty much say anything you wanted without blowback; well, except for being attacked, or flamed, by others.
In the early years, AOL blocked access to the wider online world, but eventually provided it in a streamlined format, with simple point and click interfaces. So I scoped out a few forums with topics of interest and hung out a while. Sometimes I’d even participate, but not as eagerly as others.
I did run into a few online cliques along the way. One consisted of people who, having too much time on their hands, would flame AOL. As an actual AOL employee, I’d sometimes respond to blatant factual errors or falsehoods. Their responses were almost universally vicious. It was all a game to them.
One even berated me for my refusal to use abusive language. “Here’s the deal. I flame you and you flame me.” While I wouldn’t abide by the program. I attempted to debate on the basis of facts and logic, but some of those anonymous posters were just relentless. To them it was just a game.
In the late 1990s, my teenaged son, Grayson and I began collaborating on a series of sci-fi novels. Grayson and one of his young friends decided they wanted to get the word out about what we were doing and so they posted a few messages on several Usenet-based sci-fi forums.
One of those forums catered to budding writers, most of whom followed a certain fantasy author that I shall not name. I was not a reader of that person’s books.
Now our novel didn’t have high literary pretentions. It was first and foremost space opera, although we weren’t above adding social commentary.
While some devoted sci-fi fans look down on space opera, it has become the most popular sub-genre. Consider “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” as famous examples, and don’t forget the various “Stargate” shows for cable TV’s Syfy channel.
Well, Grayson and I had some intriguing ideas, but we were also learning, and the environment in that Usenet forum was downright hostile. It got so bad that my agent, someone highly respected in the sci-fi universe, posted a message saying, in essence, “grow up.” Well, that put the argument to bed, and Grayson and I went elsewhere.
Usenet is yesterday’s news, but online forums have proliferated. Using free or fairly low-cost commercial software, anyone with a web site can set up a place for discussions. Sometimes it’s limited to a “Comments” section on a blog, but a forum allows for a wider range of discussions, essentially in a loose format where you can engage in a virtually unlimited range of topics. Well, depending on the limits imposed in a particular forum of course.
And don’t forget Facebook and Twitter.
The Paracast Community Forums went live nine years ago, and with nearly a quarter-million posts, it has become an extremely popular online watering hole for discussions about UFOs and all sorts of paranormal pursuits. We also get into politics, and one of the most popular threads – or topics – is about whether humans are responsible for global warming.
Let me tell you that it gets hot and heavy sometimes.
Several volunteer forum moderators help us keep things going. Again, we take a benevolent dictator approach, which means we don’t mind vigorous debates, and sometimes a little “blue” language, but if members go overboard with their arguments, we will take steps to shut it down. We don’t like to censor, but we have the “power” to edit or remove an offensive message.
Sometimes we issue a warning, but we can ban a member for a short cooling off period, or permanently. We’d rather not resort to the latter step, but it happens from time to time when things really get out of hand. We do have a set of Terms and Rules, posted in the forum, which sets the guidelines.
As with Usenet, some of the worst offenders will, to some degree, attempt to take advantage of anonymity in our forums. They use a pseudonym, and even if the name is real, it’s not that you see the person or can confront them directly.
Even when the debaters observe the rules of the road, you often wonder whether they’d resort to fisticuffs if they actually meet each other. Yet when that happens, without the shield of anonymity, they will usually behave. Some of the most blatant flame-throwing posters are really nice when you actually talk to them in person. I suppose it becomes a role-playing game to some of these people.
As you might imagine, the cliques we see in the forums mirror what you see among people who are interested in the world of the unknown. The emotions are understandable, and those of you blessed – or cursed – with one or more personal experiences clearly have a stake in the discussions.
The excesses in such debates – and the antics in which some people engage – clearly has soured some people on admitting they are actually involved in these fields. More and more people will regard being identified with Ufology, for example, as a pejorative. It’s not pretty. While the feuds have persisted for decades, the relative freedom of the online world may have made matters worse.
The beginning and end of it is this: When you post in a forum, consider for a moment how you’d treat someone if you met them face-to-face, or on the phone. Try to treat them with the same respect when you respond to a forum message. If you are attacked, I hope you will disagree agreeably.
I know it’s hard. I’ve been at the other end of attacks for years, but I’ve never used vulgar language, and I try to keep the personal references to a minimum, although it’s really hard sometimes.
There’s enough bad behavior in our world. Can’t we just try to get along?
Copyright 1999-2015 The Paracast LLC. 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!
