THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
November 22, 2015
www.theparacast.com
We Explore UFOs Through the Ages with Chris Aubeck 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.
A PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! We have another radio show, and for a low 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 when you sign up for The Paracast+. NEW! We’ve added an RSS feed for fast updates of the latest episodes and we give free ebooks for long-term subscriptions. A Paracast+ video channel is coming soon. Check out our new “Lifetime” membership! For more information about our premium package, please visit: Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present Chris Aubeck, co-author (with Martin Shough) of “Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History.” To understand the real nature of the UFO phenomenon, it’s important to evaluate UFO sightings across the centuries. Are cases from hundreds of years ago similar to modern cases? If UFOs are an age-old phenomenon, how does that fact provide clues as to what’s really going on? All in all, this will be a truly fascinating session that will move the discussion about UFOs into fascinating areas.
Chris O’Brien’s Site: Our Strange Planet
After The Paracast -- Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers on November 22: We discuss our online reviews, such as the iTunes comments on The Paracast, where people complain about all the ads, but ignore the existence of the ad-free version on The Paracast. We also note that the author of one of the most controversial books discussed on The Paracast in recent months actually received ratings of 4.3 stars out of 5 on Amazon for that book. We talk about author/researcher Chris Aubeck’s efforts to do forensic research to dig out the facts behind the many paranormal cases collected in the early part of the 20th century by Charles Fort and the ways and means to learn what’s going on. The discussion turns to the subject of ancient astronauts, that advanced beings visited humans in early historic times. Where does legend and religion and belief end in understanding the true nature of these events? Are those early encounters with advanced beings in any way related to the UFO sighings of our modern era as some researchers claim?
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.
Living in a Sound Bite Culture
By Gene Steinberg
The discourse about serious issues, such a politics, has long lacked nuance. The press will often seize upon a single sentence or phrase from a long statement on an issue, and use that as a means to summarize the entire statement. It doesn’t matter if the sentence may convey very different meanings when it’s taken out of context.
This is especially true on cable and broadcast news outlets, where a single sentence, or phrase, can fuel hours upon hours of heated debate, even if the complete statement is relatively innocuous.
While we seldom deal with politics on The Paracast — except as it may related to government knowledge or conspiracies on the paranormal — it’s fitting to cite just one notorious example.
So during the 2012 campaign, President Obama gave a speech at a rally in Virginia. He was riffing on the concept that it takes a village, meaning that we succeed not just on what we do ourselves, but on what we all do together.
His partisan critics quickly seized on one phrase, “you didn’t build that” and created a bogus talking point that he was somehow dissing businesses by asserting they were not responsible for their own success. Indeed, the Republican convention had a whole segment based on this bogus theme.
But if you actually read the statement in context, the phrase followed and was related to comments about the impact of teachers, roads and bridges.
Here’s the key paragraph that puts the kibosh on the claim that businesses were under attack by Obama and, therefore, by Democrats:
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”
That’s not the entire statement, but you get the idea. Even if you became the most successful executive on the planet, and Apple’s Tim Cook would be an ideal example, he didn’t get to where he is all by himself. He had to start somewhere. In short the full statement — feel free to Google it — actually celebrates business, but also observes how the commons makes it possible for people to achieve great things by building upon those foundations.
It really doesn’t matter if you adore the President, consider him a corporate shill (which is closer to my feelings on the matter), or regard him as the devil incarnate. Wouldn’t you prefer to know what he really meant rather than the distorted vision deliberately spun by his political opponents? At least you can make up your own mind based on facts and not fantasy.
All right, how does an oft-quoted out-of-context statement relate to our paranormal universe?
Well, we live in a sound bite culture, in which we want our news in tiny digestible bits, and a key phase or sentence may be presented as the core of the story. When I covered a traditional news beat as a broadcast reporter, my bosses insisted that I insert “actualities,” short sound clips to drive home the meat of the story, and sometimes give it an entertaining twist. That was particularly true if the subject of the story said something especially dumb.
Of course, I was expected to present sound bites that were in context, and accurately reflected what the subject of the story was talking about. Nowadays, certain news outlets, usually cable news, create what Chris O’Brien refers to as “Frankenquotes,” statements, taken out of context, that mislead you as to what was actually meant.
Some years ago, a former co-host of The Paracast appeared at a meeting run by the local branch of a UFO group. He was the long-winded sort, and as he delivered nuanced comments about the complexities of the UFO mystery, an audience member interrupted and asked for the “Reader’s Digest” version.
True, people are often too busy to spend much time dealing with stories that require long paragraphs to explain. Statements reflecting nuance and gray areas are often overlooked.
You wonder how anyone can get a handle on what’s really happening when they depend on short audio or video clips that may not even reflect what the story is actually about.
So it comes as no surprise to see snappy labels attached to people and ideas. People who follow the UFO enigma are thus identified as “ET believers.” True, the majority of people who accept the reality of UFOs favor the extraterrestrial hypothesis. But not everyone. Some hold different points of view, some are agnostic about the answer, meaning they haven’t accepted a final conclusion one way or the other.
But they are still “ET believers,” because some unidentified news writer or reporter happened to label all of us with a broad brush.
Forget about nuance.
I remember a recent UFO convention that was erroneously described, in a press report, as essentially a place for UFO abductees to commiserate with one another. That may, in part, have been true with some of those who attended the event. But not everyone, and probably not the majority of those who showed up.
I rather suspect that the alleged reporter paid a fast visit to the vendor tables. He or she noticed a few that concentrated on UFO abductions, where some people may have talked about their own experiences, and concluded that to be the sole purpose of the convention. It didn’t matter that the list of speakers actually made presentations on a variety of subjects related to UFOs.
As you can see, unless you want to put in the time and energy, and explore a variety of approaches from different publications, just learning about the events of the day is near impossible. If you focus strictly on a news outlet that advances a certain political point of view or belief system, you are guaranteed not to learn what’s really going on.
By the same token, if you concentrate strictly on UFO personalities, books and blog posts that appear to validate your point of view, you are probably not going to get a full understanding of the scope and complexity of the topic.
Yes, I realize most of you have a life, and the struggle to deal with your personal needs, including family, friends, and your job, doesn’t leave much free time to really understand what is happening around the world — and perhaps beyond.
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!
November 22, 2015
www.theparacast.com
We Explore UFOs Through the Ages with Chris Aubeck 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.
A PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! We have another radio show, and for a low 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 when you sign up for The Paracast+. NEW! We’ve added an RSS feed for fast updates of the latest episodes and we give free ebooks for long-term subscriptions. A Paracast+ video channel is coming soon. Check out our new “Lifetime” membership! For more information about our premium package, please visit: Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present Chris Aubeck, co-author (with Martin Shough) of “Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History.” To understand the real nature of the UFO phenomenon, it’s important to evaluate UFO sightings across the centuries. Are cases from hundreds of years ago similar to modern cases? If UFOs are an age-old phenomenon, how does that fact provide clues as to what’s really going on? All in all, this will be a truly fascinating session that will move the discussion about UFOs into fascinating areas.
Chris O’Brien’s Site: Our Strange Planet
After The Paracast -- Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers on November 22: We discuss our online reviews, such as the iTunes comments on The Paracast, where people complain about all the ads, but ignore the existence of the ad-free version on The Paracast. We also note that the author of one of the most controversial books discussed on The Paracast in recent months actually received ratings of 4.3 stars out of 5 on Amazon for that book. We talk about author/researcher Chris Aubeck’s efforts to do forensic research to dig out the facts behind the many paranormal cases collected in the early part of the 20th century by Charles Fort and the ways and means to learn what’s going on. The discussion turns to the subject of ancient astronauts, that advanced beings visited humans in early historic times. Where does legend and religion and belief end in understanding the true nature of these events? Are those early encounters with advanced beings in any way related to the UFO sighings of our modern era as some researchers claim?
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.
Living in a Sound Bite Culture
By Gene Steinberg
The discourse about serious issues, such a politics, has long lacked nuance. The press will often seize upon a single sentence or phrase from a long statement on an issue, and use that as a means to summarize the entire statement. It doesn’t matter if the sentence may convey very different meanings when it’s taken out of context.
This is especially true on cable and broadcast news outlets, where a single sentence, or phrase, can fuel hours upon hours of heated debate, even if the complete statement is relatively innocuous.
While we seldom deal with politics on The Paracast — except as it may related to government knowledge or conspiracies on the paranormal — it’s fitting to cite just one notorious example.
So during the 2012 campaign, President Obama gave a speech at a rally in Virginia. He was riffing on the concept that it takes a village, meaning that we succeed not just on what we do ourselves, but on what we all do together.
His partisan critics quickly seized on one phrase, “you didn’t build that” and created a bogus talking point that he was somehow dissing businesses by asserting they were not responsible for their own success. Indeed, the Republican convention had a whole segment based on this bogus theme.
But if you actually read the statement in context, the phrase followed and was related to comments about the impact of teachers, roads and bridges.
Here’s the key paragraph that puts the kibosh on the claim that businesses were under attack by Obama and, therefore, by Democrats:
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”
That’s not the entire statement, but you get the idea. Even if you became the most successful executive on the planet, and Apple’s Tim Cook would be an ideal example, he didn’t get to where he is all by himself. He had to start somewhere. In short the full statement — feel free to Google it — actually celebrates business, but also observes how the commons makes it possible for people to achieve great things by building upon those foundations.
It really doesn’t matter if you adore the President, consider him a corporate shill (which is closer to my feelings on the matter), or regard him as the devil incarnate. Wouldn’t you prefer to know what he really meant rather than the distorted vision deliberately spun by his political opponents? At least you can make up your own mind based on facts and not fantasy.
All right, how does an oft-quoted out-of-context statement relate to our paranormal universe?
Well, we live in a sound bite culture, in which we want our news in tiny digestible bits, and a key phase or sentence may be presented as the core of the story. When I covered a traditional news beat as a broadcast reporter, my bosses insisted that I insert “actualities,” short sound clips to drive home the meat of the story, and sometimes give it an entertaining twist. That was particularly true if the subject of the story said something especially dumb.
Of course, I was expected to present sound bites that were in context, and accurately reflected what the subject of the story was talking about. Nowadays, certain news outlets, usually cable news, create what Chris O’Brien refers to as “Frankenquotes,” statements, taken out of context, that mislead you as to what was actually meant.
Some years ago, a former co-host of The Paracast appeared at a meeting run by the local branch of a UFO group. He was the long-winded sort, and as he delivered nuanced comments about the complexities of the UFO mystery, an audience member interrupted and asked for the “Reader’s Digest” version.
True, people are often too busy to spend much time dealing with stories that require long paragraphs to explain. Statements reflecting nuance and gray areas are often overlooked.
You wonder how anyone can get a handle on what’s really happening when they depend on short audio or video clips that may not even reflect what the story is actually about.
So it comes as no surprise to see snappy labels attached to people and ideas. People who follow the UFO enigma are thus identified as “ET believers.” True, the majority of people who accept the reality of UFOs favor the extraterrestrial hypothesis. But not everyone. Some hold different points of view, some are agnostic about the answer, meaning they haven’t accepted a final conclusion one way or the other.
But they are still “ET believers,” because some unidentified news writer or reporter happened to label all of us with a broad brush.
Forget about nuance.
I remember a recent UFO convention that was erroneously described, in a press report, as essentially a place for UFO abductees to commiserate with one another. That may, in part, have been true with some of those who attended the event. But not everyone, and probably not the majority of those who showed up.
I rather suspect that the alleged reporter paid a fast visit to the vendor tables. He or she noticed a few that concentrated on UFO abductions, where some people may have talked about their own experiences, and concluded that to be the sole purpose of the convention. It didn’t matter that the list of speakers actually made presentations on a variety of subjects related to UFOs.
As you can see, unless you want to put in the time and energy, and explore a variety of approaches from different publications, just learning about the events of the day is near impossible. If you focus strictly on a news outlet that advances a certain political point of view or belief system, you are guaranteed not to learn what’s really going on.
By the same token, if you concentrate strictly on UFO personalities, books and blog posts that appear to validate your point of view, you are probably not going to get a full understanding of the scope and complexity of the topic.
Yes, I realize most of you have a life, and the struggle to deal with your personal needs, including family, friends, and your job, doesn’t leave much free time to really understand what is happening around the world — and perhaps beyond.
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!
