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Professional Behavior!


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
I know there are other radio shows and other forums.

But I don't go around saying guests shouldn't appear on other shows, or post on other forums.

Obviously, we have freedom of speech, and nobody stops you from doing what you want to do.

Our main restrictions here are explained in the forum's Terms and Rules.

We allow a lot, but we don't allow it to go too far. It's one reason why I have avoided much discussion of my personal problems, which are not discussed in detail on The Paracast either. It leads to personal attacks really fast.

I have sent out emails about these matters, but it's easy to remove yourself and still read the weekly newsletters and posts here.

At the same time, there are people who have been secretly contacting some of our regular forum posters suggesting they leave us and go to whatever forum they are pushing. Sometimes they cite their disagreements or outright hatred for me as a reason.

Some of these people have contacted people who plan to or have appeared on The Paracast exhorting them not to go on the show.

Why is it their business anyway?

If you are contacted by such people, please just use your common sense.

If you have any concerns about me, the forum or the show, feel free to open a personal conversation and express your concerns.

Feedback is welcome. But don't make it personal, or about my personal life. Otherwise, the messages will be gone real fast!
 
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Why is it ufoology always has to resemble something that either looks like a witch hunt, a mccarthyist red scare era or a grade school snowball fight? Is it the subject matter that makes people lose their minds or is it about the people who are attracted to the subject matter? Maybe we should all just read George Hansen and learn a few things about the trickster's role in our culture and not take things so seriously all the time. I mean this is a discussion about lights in the sky after all.
 
Why is it ufoology always has to resemble something that either looks like a witch hunt, a mccarthyist red scare era or a grade school snowball fight? Is it the subject matter that makes people lose their minds or is it about the people who are attracted to the subject matter? Maybe we should all just read George Hansen and learn a few things about the trickster's role in our culture and not take things so seriously all the time. I mean this is a discussion about lights in the sky after all.

This George Hansen: George P. Hansen - RationalWiki

Not that the "Rational" Wiki is always unbiased or fair-minded ( it's obviously not ), but it helps to look at both sides of the issues.
 
Why is it ufoology always has to resemble something that either looks like a witch hunt, a mccarthyist red scare era or a grade school snowball fight? Is it the subject matter that makes people lose their minds or is it about the people who are attracted to the subject matter? Maybe we should all just read George Hansen and learn a few things about the trickster's role in our culture and not take things so seriously all the time. I mean this is a discussion about lights in the sky after all.
Does this mean everyone is going to be the paragon of good manners? :cool: No more trolling? Snipping divergent views? Swamping threads with the intent to derail? Ya think? Maybe?

Hi, Burnt State! :)
 
This show does not believe in freedom of speech. This is constantly reinforced when you advocate controlled speech if you are a member of MUFON for example.

A free speech advocate would encourage you to say anything you like. The moment you start to qualify a statement like "We believe in free speech, but...." It means you don't believe in free speech at all, you believe in controlled speech.

Encourage everyone to express their ideas and if your ideas are better you will prevail in the court of public opinion.
 
This show does not believe in freedom of speech. This is constantly reinforced when you advocate controlled speech if you are a member of MUFON for example.
A free speech advocate would encourage you to say anything you like. The moment you start to qualify a statement like "We believe in free speech, but...." It means you don't believe in free speech at all, you believe in controlled speech.
Encourage everyone to express their ideas and if your ideas are better you will prevail in the court of public opinion.

Freedom of speech is a more complex issue than simply barfing out whatever you want and thinking that it's just as legitimate as whatever anyone else might have to say. The fact of the matter is that some opinions amount to little more than noise, misinformation, propaganda, or unconstructive criticism. So if the aim is to filter out the signal from the noise, then why not filter out the noise right at the source? It just makes sense. The problem ( IMO ) is when a person believes they have a legitimate point or counterpoint to make and are prevented from doing so. If you believe you've been a victim of that sort of thing then you should have every right to some sort of appeal.
 
Freedom of speech is a more complex issue than simply barfing out whatever you want and thinking that it's just as legitimate as whatever anyone else might have to say. The fact of the matter is that some opinions amount to little more than noise, misinformation, propaganda, or unconstructive criticism. So if the aim is to filter out the signal from the noise, then why not filter out the noise right at the source? It just makes sense. The problem ( IMO ) is when a person believes they have a legitimate point or counterpoint to make and are prevented from doing so. If you believe you've been a victim of that sort of thing then you should have every right to some sort of appeal.
Freedom of speech is not a complex issue at all, it's very simple, you either believe all people have a right to say whatever they like or you don't. And if you advocate the later you must also support giving the state or some other body the right to tell you what you can and can't say at the power of a gun.

If someone has what are in your opinion bad ideas, you should be delighted that they wish to share them with people. Because if they do now everyone will know how bad this person's ideas are and you will have a platform to come in and use these bad arguments as a platform to show why your arguments are better. Your arguments will be strengthened by going up against the bad arguments and prevailing. Hoorah.
 
Freedom of speech is not a complex issue at all, it's very simple, you either believe all people have a right to say whatever they like or you don't.
OK I stand corrected. Your version of freedom of speech is simplistic. I look at it more like freedom of information. In fact, because speech is information, the two are part of the same issue, and it's not reasonable to disclose everything all the time or always make it cost free.
And if you advocate the later you must also support giving the state or some other body the right to tell you what you can and can't say at the power of a gun.
That logic is faulty. There are ways to handle differing views besides shooting one another ( or at least one would hope that at least some people would recognize this ).
If someone has what are in your opinion bad ideas, you should be delighted that they wish to share them with people. Because if they do now everyone will know how bad this person's ideas are and you will have a platform to come in and use these bad arguments as a platform to show why your arguments are better. Your arguments will be strengthened by going up against the bad arguments and prevailing. Hoorah.
That's definitely one way to handle the situation. But what if that idea is the latest stealth fighter technology or the names of undercover intelligence assets? What if it's a lie that is used as propaganda that starts a war or ruins someone's life? Have you never heard the phrase "Loose lips sink ships"? Are you in support of decriminalizing espionage, libel, and defamation?

Personally, I'm an anarchist, which means I believe that in addition to having the right to say whatever we want, we should also have the right to shut someone up if they're going to cause harm, and that the level of force used should be reasonable and commensurate with the amount of harm ( or potential harm ). That gets into how we define harm. Maybe it's just as innocuous as affecting the quality of a discussion forum, and the solution is to censor or ban a participant. How far should a forum participant be able to go? Are you sure the issue is really as simple as you first thought?
 
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Yes, I'm quite sure.

And you are an advocate of controlled speech as you are willing to use force to suppress someone else's speech.

How do you know what speech is dangerous? How can you be so sure that it would start a war? What if you go ahead and shoot someone because you believe you are preventing a war? This is equivalent lunacy of someone who believes they should be judge, jury and executioner.

All these lunatics who thought Trump was going to start a war when he was talking tough on Twitter to Kim, by your logic someone should have had the power to assassinate him solely because they thought it dangerous and we would have not only killed an innocent man but we would have missed the chance of peace.

Speech does not have the power to control a person's body for them, and if you hear something and you act upon it, its that persons individual responsibility for their actions, not the fault of the person who was deceiving them.

And if you sign a confidentially agreement willingly you are voluntarily entering into something so free speech doesn't apply to those matters.

So yeh it is that simple, maybe its you who needs to do some more thinking on it :eek:
 
Yes, I'm quite sure. And you are an advocate of controlled speech as you are willing to use force to suppress someone else's speech. How do you know what speech is dangerous? How can you be so sure that it would start a war? What if you go ahead and shoot someone because you believe you are preventing a war? This is equivalent lunacy of someone who believes they should be judge, jury and executioner.
You're the one who keeps talking about shooting people. Not me.
All these lunatics who thought Trump was going to start a war when he was talking tough on Twitter to Kim, by your logic someone should have had the power to assassinate him solely because they thought it dangerous and we would have not only killed an innocent man but we would have missed the chance of peace.
There you go again.
Speech does not have the power to control a person's body for them, and if you hear something and you act upon it, its that persons individual responsibility for their actions, not the fault of the person who was deceiving them.
Speech may not have the power to directly control someones body ( at least not normally ), but it does have the power to ruin reputations and that can ruin people's lives. But you hand waved my point about defamation and libel. You also hand waved my point on espionage where disclosing the identities of field agents could result in deaths and/or serious national security breaches.

And just to make my position clear ( again ), I'm not a supporter of capital punishment and believe that any compensation for a crime or civil action needs to be commensurate with the harm done. Shooting someone for speaking their mind on everyday issues would clearly be disproportionate, and I don't know of any censorship laws other than espionage that includes the death penalty anyway. So get a grip on reality and recognize that in the case of defamation, libel, and espionage, if someone starts barfing whatever info they want wherever they want, it may be justifiable for others to prevent them from doing that, in which case the force required needs to be proportionate to the harm being done.

Additionally individuals should have the right not to have to deal with people invading and disrupting their personal space or place of business on the grounds of "free speech", and discussion forums fall into that category. That's why there are moderators. Not all moderation is fair-minded IMO, but the owners should still have the say as to what goes on with them because they're paying for the setup and space. You can either accept that
or take your argument up with someone else.
 
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Anyway, I did hear of the latest effort to poach members from this forum, with someone claiming that this other forum is friendlier. I suppose if you want to defame people, since it has dozens of pages attacking me personally. I suppose some of us have different opinions of being friendly.

Problem is that some sites abuse freedom of speech to defame people.
 
Anyway, I did hear of the latest effort to poach members from this forum, with someone claiming that this other forum is friendlier. I suppose if you want to defame people, since it has dozens of pages attacking me personally. I suppose some of us have different opinions of being friendly.

Problem is that some sites abuse freedom of speech to defame people.

I can’t see the appeal. They don’t have a podcast. They don’t have any original content. It’s just a chat room.
 
So the information on the forum that highlights your problems Gene,is it all untrue?
Old old news repeated every so often. False or highly exaggerated and hateful. It’s a reflection of what’s been going on for years started by a small fang of stalkers.
 
Why is it ufoology always has to resemble something that either looks like a witch hunt, a mccarthyist red scare era or a grade school snowball fight? Is it the subject matter that makes people lose their minds or is it about the people who are attracted to the subject matter?
Here's how I tend to find myself in the middle of these snowball fights. What I do with contentious issues is deconstruct one side and then the other and cross reference the results with additional sources. In principle most people I encounter tend agree with the above, unless that is, it's their view that is being deconstructed. That's because most people it seems, don't like their views picked apart by someone looking for contradictions. So when someone is doing it to both sides in a debate, that person can quickly make enemies of both sides.

This was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn in life because in my naive idealist worldview I thought we were all essentially on the same side when it came to the search for truth. That was before I learned that most people pick whichever version of events benefits them more, and the truth is largely irrelevant, or even undesirable. This is the real world we live in. I fear that the rewards for truth seekers are found more in fables and comic books than real life.
 
Open mind and listen to 'the Paracast' and it's excellent 'After the Paracast'. We all listen to other podcasts and learn through science and the paranormal (crazy side aswell) concepts throough professionals radio hosts seeking life big questions are we alone in this univserse.
 
Freedom of speech becomes a moot point when there’s nobody listening anymore. This thread is seven months dormant but still pops up amongst the most recently active. Sad to see the once mighty Paracast end up like this. The Paracast has become paranormal podcasting’s Friends Reunited in an age of Instagram and Facebook. Sorry Gene but it’s time to put your server costs towards your living expenses. It’s been a great ride and you really did set the gold standard back in the day. I along with many others was a very happy paid-up subscriber. You’re flogging a dead horse though at this point.
 
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