Skeptics and the Roswell “Myth”

 Our friend, Lance Moody and his skeptical comrades, CDA [Christopher Allan] and Gilles Fernandez insist, vehemently, that the 1947 Roswell incident and its accumulated aftermath of material is a myth.

Lance has a current comment about this at Kevin Randle’s blog where the Roswell tale is redundantly exercised, even more so than here.

What is discouraging about Lance’s stance and that of his skeptical allies is that Jung and his acolyte Joseph Campbell, along with Mircea Eliade and Sir James George Frazer have determined, if not scientifically at least academically, that at the core of mythical tales lie an absolute, profound truth.

Those, literate, in the works of those men and others know this and the matter is closed to dispute in most quarters of debate.

Yes. Roswell is a myth. And those who continue to pursue the topic (David Rudiak, The Roswell Investigations Team, Kevin Randle, Stanton Friedman at al.), flawed as their approach may be, seek to get at the core truth, inside the Roswell “myth.”

Intellectuals and UFO thinkers of repute allow the ongoing Roswell pursuit, whereas the skeptics would shut it down.

One might ascribe a kind of mental/emotional or existent denial on the part of the skeptics.

But let’s just say, they are ill-read or illiterate when it comes to the academic vicissitudes of mythology and the vast amount of material that supports its paradigms.

RR

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Gaines M Crook's rejected MUFON article on UFOs and Electromagnetism

Joel Crook has provided us with some of his father's musings on UFOs. We've placed and will be placing some of that material at our UFO Heterodoxy blog -- http://ufoh.blogspot.com

Joel sent this missives about an article his father wrote for MUFON that was ultimately rejected. Here is Joel's e-mail and copies of letters to MUFON from his father about the article:

Rich:

Below you will find the letters my father sent to Walter Andrus in regards to the "Some Thoughts..." article that was rejected by MUFON. The first agreeing to splitting his "Thoughts" article into two parts and the second one responding to James McCampbell's objections to the article.

I believe there is a third letter that outlines where he thought MUFON has gotten off track and why but I'm not sure it is complete.

The reason I send this is to provide context for why the article never appeared….

regards;

Joel Crook

---------------------------

First letter
---------------------------

GMC Laboratories
Chatsworth, CA 91311

January 15, 1991

Mr. Walt Andrus, International Director
MUFON UFO Network
103 Oldtowne Road
Seguin, TX 78155

RE:  Publication of Paper, “Some Thoughts  about "Electromagnetic Effects” Your Card of 1-11-91.

Dear Walt:

Thank you for your card. I think the best way to split the paper is at the paragraph break at the top of page 9. This makes both halves about equal and since the new paragraph as a new subject there should be no loss of continuity. I have used the IEEE publication instructions in the listing of references where references are listed in alphabetical order of the surname of the first author. In splitting the paper I listed the references used in Part I after Part I and the references used in Part II after Part II. I am sending a printout of the revised document.

I have enclosed a copy of my resume. Since it may be diffi­cult to try to reduce it, why don't you use the following:  "Mr. Crook has a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering, is a registered professional engineer and has had many years of experience in the generation and measurement of electric, magnet­ic and electromagnetic fields".

If you need anything else please call or write.

Yours truly,

----------------------------
Second Letter
--------------------------

GMC Laboratories
October 12, 1991

Mr. Walt Andrus, International Director
MUFON UFO Network
103 Oldtowne Road
Seguin, TX 78155

RE: Review of my Paper,"Some Thoughts on Electromagnetic Effects"

Dear Walt:

Thank you for the copy of the review of my paper by James McCampbell.  I have a few comments though not as a rebuttal.  A rebuttal would be, as expressed by Jaime Shandera, a  "pissing contest".

When I wrote the paper I had at least three things in mind.

1. I thought someone with a knowledgeof electromagnetics should set the record straight on what electromagnetics can and cannot do.

2. I vehemently disagree with McCampbell's statement when he says "But there is no reason to assume that the mechanisms by which vehicle interference take place are beyond the capacity of contemporary science". This statement would lead us to believe that we already know all that there is to know about everything and as Allen Hynek put it, there will be no 21st century science and  no 30th century science.

3.   There appears to be an attitude among most people who have at all considered the thought, that if the intelligence behind the UFOs is indeed alien then it will be like the movies and the TV  stories.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  If this intelligence is indeed alien, then bright seasoned minds will crack at the first interface with it. The danger of contact may not be what their weapons can do to us but what a face to face meeting can do to our minds. In fact, it may have already happened.  It is entirely possible that the ultimate secret is not physical evidence of crashed saucers but the record of what happened at the first interface between the aliens and humans.

From the tenor of McCampbell's review one would think that I had attacked his person instead of rejecting his ideas.  Nothing could be further from the truth. While I certainly disagree with the ideas he expressed, at no time did I intend to impugn his character or his person. If I created this impression, I beg his forgiveness.  There are some other things which come to mind but that would bring us too close to the "pissing contest" which I mentioned earlier.

Thank you for considering my paper.

Yours truly,

Gaines M. Crook

-----------------------------------------------------

Again, the article may be read via http://ufoh.blogspot.com. (It's a WORD document, and while I've emended some of Gaines Crook's other materials, I have left this one intact so it appears verbatim.)

RR

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An Interesting take on the UFO Phenomenon

Joel Crook (aka gishzida) sent me this material in an e-mail.  I find it interesting and think you might also:

I thought you might like to see the full context of the letter my father, Gaines M. Crook, sent to Cynthia Hind in 1998. Also you will find a copy of his Resume from May of 2000 to give you an idea of what his qualifications were.

I have been trying to recover some of the documents he wrote but only have a few of them and they are mostly in "WordStar" format.  To make matters worse most of what I have is fragments or  file backups which are garbled or missing information which is sad.

What is even sadder is that I have not read or seen a single scientifically "qualified" hard science researcher who might make something of my father's speculations concerning the 'technology' used by whatever / whoever is responsible 

regards,

Joel Crook

-----------------------------------------------------------

GMC Laboratories  
Phone
Fax 

Septemebr [sic] 9, 1998

Mrs. Cynthia Hind  Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe

Dear Mrs. Hind,

Thank you for arranging to have your publisher send me a copy of your latest book, "UFOs OVER AFRICA". I just completed reading it and enjoyed it more than I have any UFO book which I have read in years. Most UFO writers seem to have the idea that UFOs are an open book and they know everything there is to know about them even though it is completely obvious that they don't. I enjoyed your honesty and your style as well as the content of the book.

I appreciate your comment on Allen Hynek's remark that UFOs are something we "just don't understand". No one else seems to be satisfied of the magnitude and truth of the statement, but the "Father of Ufology" was completely wise and honest in his assessment. 

In the mid 1970s, I was chasing lights at night over the Antelope Valley (in an area about 30 miles west of Edwards Air Force Base) which left burned triangular tracks on the ground. In examining many of these tracks in the area, I came upon a big cottonwood tree in an earthquake fault canyon which had branches all the way to the ground. It was so enclosed until I had trouble getting myself through into the area enclosed by the branches. Inside, I found a set of burned "landing tracks". I wrote Alan Hynek a letter and told him what I had found and remarked that whatever it was, it certainly didn't fly into this enclosed space. He wrote back that he was not at all surprised and that he had heard from credible witnesses who had observed UFOs both emerge from the ground and sink into it.

A high percentage of the tales told and books written about UFOs in recent times here in the US are blatant misinformation.

I have no idea who is behind it nor does it seem to matter, but I do know that it is present because many things do not square with experience. The more amazing thing is that most people who are interested in UFOs don't seem to be aware of it. The only one who didn't completely get away with it was Col. Corso, but some of the others are just as bad. I used to follow the researches of the late Len Stringfield very closely. I don't think there was ever a more honest and straightforward person than Len, but some of the stories he was handed were pure garbage and cannot stand close technical scrutiny. One of the often repeated stories related to Lin as well as others was that of transporting downed UFOs. 

There are tales of tarpaulin covered 30 foot and larger UFOs being transported on military trucks and railroads. This just doesn't wash. A truck bed is about 8 feet wide and a rail car about 10 feet. For a 30 foot UFO centered on the truck, this means that 12 feet is going to hang off each side of a truck and 10 feet hang off each side of a rail car. Trying to move either is blatantly ridiculous. In my work, I have built a number of large magnetic coils of generally circular shape, which were used to demagnetize components of scientific spacecraft or the spacecraft themselves. The largest which was movable by truck was an octagonal coil about 12 feet in diameter and it had to be turned major axis vertical in order to do so. One time I was asked to bid on building an 18 foot coil by TRW, Inc. in Redondo Beach, CA. I determined that there was no way that it could be built at my location in Chatsworth, CA and hauled to Redondo Beach, 35 miles away. It would have had to be built on site.

I worked at the Savannah River Atomic Energy site in South Carolina from 1951 through the middle of 1956. The reactor tube sheets were about 20 feet in diameter and weighed 120 tons. They were transported from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by ship, which came down the eastern coast of the US and then went up the Savan¬nah River at Savannah, Georgia to the plant. When they were unloaded from the ship, they were moved by a special truck with a 36 wheel trailer over roads completely cleared of traffic at a rate of three miles per hour. These are real experiences. The UFOs on trailers aren't.

In another story given to Len, a UFO was supposedly shot down over the bay south of Long Island, New York by a "CW Radar", the power of which was not specified but the story stated that it was powerful enough to ionize the air along the beam path to make the air glow. By inference, I can show that radar transmitters with 6 megawatts (six  million  watts) of power will NOT cause ionization.

I was in charge of installing an ancillary electronic warfare jammer locater system which worked with a 6 megawatt pulsed radar at the Experimental SAGE Sector at South Truro, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod in 1960. This radar caused no ionization of the air with it's 6 megawatt output pulses, so it is entirely plausible that a "CW" (continuous wave) radar would not cause ionization of the air at the same power level. Now a 6 megawatt CW radar would take probably 20 megawatts of input power. In the story however, the radar is powered by a portable power generator. There was never in all of history a portable power plant which could supply this much power. I recall that at the Savannah River Plant in each reactor building area there was a steam plant of  25  Megawatts. It would have taken a small steam power plant to operate this mythical radar which shoots down UFOs. This certainly was not available in the swamps of the bay.

Another myth that has been propagated by the powers of misinformation is the idea that UFO technology has been "reverse engineered". This has showed up in many stories, the latest of which is Col. Corso's book, "The Day After Roswell". He claims, for instance that the transistor was not invented at Bell Labs but was "reverse engineered" from something out of a crashed UFO. This is blatant nonsense. There was a research program at Bell Labs by Russell Ohl which started in the mid 1930s and resulted in his discovery of the PN semiconductor junction in 1940. Soon afterwards, even though not theoretically well understood at the time, the point contact diodes were developed to be used as detectors in radars. This program was so secret until the diodes were carried from the US to England in diplomatic pouches during World War II and The patent applications filed during the war were top secret and were not declassified en only a small part of the reported effects are true. We have no scientific capability to do the things reported time and again by people who experience encounters with UFOs, such as stopping car engines. As an engineer, I have always been given assignments and required to produce results. Most of the people who envision all the convenient theories of how UFOs stop car engines have never been required to back up their speculations with results.

There are others who think that the study of the UFO phenomenon will lead to great strides in all of our scientific knowledge. This also is very doubtful. The reason for this is that in order for that to be true, there would need to be a reasonable interface between the UFO intelligence and mankind, which must bridge an enormous gap. The ethnocentricity (SIC - anthrocentricity would probably been a better word) of mankind is probably it's strongest trait and it would probably be next to impossible to establish such an interface. If there are other intelligences in the universe, we must get used to the idea that they are not what we imagine them to be and they exist in different "spaces" than we have picked out for them to be in.

The one thing which mankind needs more than anything else is to establish an non-anthrocentric mode of thought; the ability to think as an "outsider". Only then can mankind expect to think in a mode which is valid for non-human affairs. This will be next to impossible to do, but must be done if space research is to break out of the "shallows and miseries" within which it is presently bogged. Until then we will still be in the frame Allen Hynek mentioned “We just will not understand.”

Best Regards and Thanks again,

Gaines Crook

++++++++++++++++++++++++
EXPERIENCE RESUME OF GAINES M. CROOK, P.E. 

May 2000

1. EDUCATION 

BS in Electrical Engineering, University of South Carolina, 1952.

Extension Courses
    UCLA
        Digital Computers 
        Transistors
        Government Contracts Administration
        Space Science
    L.A. Pierce College
        Philosophy
    Cal Poly, Pomona
        Microprocessors


2. EMPLOYMENT HISTORY 

February, 1972 to May 2000
Self Employed, Gaines M. Crook & Associates/GMC LABS, 
Consulting engineer

January 1959 to February 1972
Ramo-Wooldridge/Space Technology Laboratories/TRW Systems, Redondo Beach, CA. 
Member of the Technical Staff/Section Head/Department Manager/Senior Staff Engineer.

June 1956 to December 1958
Douglas Aircraft Co, Inc., Missiles Div., Santa Monica, CA. 
Design Engineer/Group Leader.

May 1953 to May 1956
E.I. duPont de Nemours & Company, Savannah River Plant,
Aiken, South Carolina. Instrument Engineer.

August 1951 to May 1953
Miller Electric Company, Aiken, S.C. Electrical Engineer.

3. Technical Experience 
Digital Computers, Circuits and Applied Techniques 
Designed digital systems and digital circuitry for many space physics experiments, also in experiment GSE. 
Designed a scanning magnetometer for measuring magnetic fields to 10 -6 of Earth's field at 12 locations, recording it on punched paper tape compatible with computer inputs for computer analysis. Designed a data storage unit and controller for commercial application. 

I am thoroughly familiar with coding, decoding sequencing and data translating logic networks, counters, registers memories A to D and D to A converters and the general subject of microprocessors.

**Data Transmission 
Designed analog and digital data links for many types of systems considering data acquisition rate, commutation, de-commutation, Nyquist rate and information bandwidth, filtering, PLL, synchronous detection and correlation. Computed complete satellite to ground communication budgets. 

Designed a whole facility for extracting analog signals from very noisy tapes and presenting the spectral content in frequency time diagrams identified in real time to one second. 

Received U.S. Patent 3,566,088 on a correlator. 

Designed a data acquisition system for a locomotive wheel tester. Designed a digital data transmission system for converting analog data from a "rheometer" (a device for measuring the viscosity of molten PVC used to manufacture phonograph records) and transmitting it to a remote data terminal and computer.

**Radio Propagation 
Ionospheric radio propagation at very low frequencies through high frequencies. 

Designed a trans-ionospheric propagation experiment. 

Did depolarization and scintillation studies. \

Nuclear blast EMP propogation. Made measurements of the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) of the July 1962 "Starfish" explosion (published - Journal of Geophysical Research Vol. 68, NO. 6, March 15, 1963). 

Path loss calculations and power budgets for space communication. 

Electromagnetic Field Measurements„ 
Established and operated for 16 years an EMC laboratory with a 12'x12' shielded room in Chatsworth, CA and an open field test site in the Mojave Desert/TehachapiMountain area of Kern County, CA in conformance with the requirements of ANSI C63.4 and the Federal Communications Commission. Electromagnetic emission tests are planned and conducted under Part 15, Subparts B and C and Part 18 of the FCC rules , which was continued until December 1996.

Microwave Point to Point Communication 
Site selection and path loss calculations, installation design, remote control and monitor system design. 

Invented a portable analog computer for calculating 1st Fresnell zones in the field, while selecting routes.

Scientific Spacecraft Physics Experiments„ 
Was completely responsible for 20 experiments of the energetic particle and electric, magnetic and electromagnetic field type. This included Project Management, experiment design and most of the detailed circuit design. Never a failure of any kind. 

After it's designed mission was completed, NASA turned off Pioneer 9 for a period of 17 years after which it was again turned on. The only experiment which was still operative was our plasma wave detector and it was operating normally.

These experiments included Plasma Wave Detectors for spacecraft P-11, OV2-1, OV3-3, OV2-5, OGO-5, Pioneers 8, 9, and 10, IMP-H, and the Pioneer-Venus orbiter. Assisted in the design of several magnetometers, micrometeoroid detectors, curved plate analyzers, and mass spectrometers. 

Designed a time-of-flight mass spectrometer micrometeoroid experiment for the "Grand Tour" Mission (which was never built).

Computer Use 
Proficient in the use of the IBM PC computer. 

Primary and Secondary Standards 
Calibration of instruments and responsibility for stan dards. Development of a 1 ppm programmable power supply for driving a 23' three axis magnetic Fensalau Coil for nulling Earth's field.

Test Equipment 
General purpose, missile system, RF equipment, counter-countermeasures systems, special purpose, integrating gyro, rate gyro. Design, development, system test requirements analysis, production design, circuit design, complete test systems and consoles, turntables. Space experiment test equipment and many others.

Radar Counter-countermeasures (jammer locaters) installation, data systems. Integration, installation design, control system design, antenna criteria.

Micromagnetics 
Designed equipment for the measurement of very small magnetic fields of spacecraft and components (10 -6 gauss) as well as very large Helmholz coil systems and controls. Designed and built several large magnetizer/ demagnetizer coils 3'to 11' in diameter while employed by TRW, Inc. A 46"x 46" coil system with a digital controller was designed and built for Martin Marietta Corporation, Denver, CO, under contract to Gaines M. Crook & Associates.

Electrostatics 
Have done considerable work on electrostatics and the detection and measurement of electric fields and electrostatic (plasma) waves in space. Originated the short capacitive (wire cage) dipole method of E-field measurement and designed and built the instrumentation which first measured electric fields in the ionosphere and magnetosphere with a very short dipole, (satellite 1964-45A). Invented the "Virtually Coexisting Spheres" electric field sensor. Did considerable work on the equilibrium charge on spacecraft in orbit. 

Was a consultant to the German Government Space Agency (Gesells craft fur Weltraumforschung) and to ERNO Raumfohrttech nik, a German Company on the subject of equilibrium charge on orbiting spacecraft.

Electronic Design and Fabrication 
For six years I operated the Advanced Techniques Department within TRW Systems. This Department was a "self-contained" design and fabrication activity which incorporated the system design, electronic design and mechanical design and mechanical and electronic fabrication into one integrated unit. Space Physics experiment packages were designed and built to all levels of Quality Assurance without a single failure in space.

Since having my own company, we have designed and built several pieces of equipment for other companies, under contract, including a Surge Generator to simulate lightning stroke effects as required by Part 68 of the FCC Rules, several telephone loop simulators with ring generators, a magnetizer/demagnetizer coil and controller, several special data acquisition systems. 

Electromagnetics 
Many propagation problems relating primarily to the atmosphere-ionosphere, magnetosphere interface. Designed equipment and measured the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from the 1962 "Starfish" nuclear explosion in space with homemade equipment in my garage in Canoga Park, CA. Designed many antenna systems. Measurement of electromagnetic fields for control of electromagnetic interference. 

Telephone Terminal Equipment Testing 
Established a Telephone Terminal Equipment Test Facility in 1974 and which has tested, "Certified" and Registered thousands of pieces of terminal equipment for companies throughout the United States, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Italy, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and Singapore. This is still my primary business activity, although at a very low level.

Physics 
During the period from 1962 through 1971, I became very involved with the various aspects of physics and completed a number of assignments in physics. I am especially qualified in communicating with physicists and reducing their requirements for experiments to practice.

Artificial Heart 
In a design study for the Atomic Energy Commission, I designed the power controls, safeties, motor controls and mechanical mechanism for a plutonium powered im planted ventricular bypass pump with a projected life time of ten years.

Power Plant 
Steam, diesel, gasoline, including instrumentation and control. Installation design, control design system sizing, facilities criteria, instrumentation design. 
Closed cycle Rankine 

Portable Power Plant Controls Design.

Power Distribution 
Line, substation, industrial plant, lighting. Installation design, sizing, mechanical design of prefabricated substation conduit installation.

Nuclear Reactors 
Rod control systems, period meters, power calculators, charge and discharge machines. Maintenance analysis, test equipment design, instrument design, control circuit design.

Nuclear Instrumentation 
Personnel monitor, floor monitors scintillation spectrometry, linear pulse amplifiers, water monitors, proportional counters, neutron chambers (BF and compensated). Geiger counters, scintillation counters, electrometers, space physics particle detectors. 

Circuit design, detector probe design, circuit analysis, calibration methods design, fabrication and integration.

Motor Control 
Crane and door control up to 300 tons, remote hot cell actuators, motors to 3,000 HP. Installation design, control system design, equipment specification. Slow 
speed torque motor servo control.

Mechanism 
Many mechanisms including a reciprocator for artificial heart pump. Specialist on differential gearing. Holds a patent (3,468,191) on a binary control gear train. 
Holds a patent (3,397,586) on a differential mechanism for quick reverse orienting three axes of orthogonal magnetic field sensors on a spacecraft.

Optical Instrumentation, Ultraviolet and Infrared Radiometers Electronic system design including low noise detectors with mechanical choppers. Surface to air missile detectors. Meteor Flash Analyzer space experiment, gas dynamic laser temperature profile plotter.

Miscellaneous 
(1) Designed a miniature but highly efficient electron ic ignition system for a rocket engine.

(2) Designed the motor actuator system for an artificial heart, including a power load sharing system, electronic speed controls, motor commutation system, power converter and sized the rotating gear train.

(3) Have designed many solid state power inverters.

(4) While I received my degree in electrical engineering, I have considerable experience in mechanical engineering, especially mechanism and gearing. I am a Registered Mechanical Engineer in California. 

(5) Invented and patented a binary controlled gear train which produces a ratio determined by a binary coded input. 

(6) Developed and patented a controller for gasoline driven generators in the 5 KW class which causes the generator to start and furnish 120/240 VAC power to a load connected to it within 3 seconds of when the load is turned on and run as long as power is needed and to shut the generator engine down after a preset timeout period is completed from when the load is switched off. A patent application for improvements was filed and has been allowed and will be issued in the first half of 2000.

MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE 
(1) Group Leader, Thor Missile Test Equipment, Douglas Aircraft, Missiles Div.
Supervised 60 engineers. Responsible for test equipment design and fabrication. Contract value -- $10 Million.

(2) Section Head - Project Engineer of AN/TLQ-8 Counter-Countermeasures System at Ramo Woolridge. 
Supervised 25 technical people. Responsible for field deployment site selection, installation and field test. Contract value -- $5.5 Million.

(3) Section Head, Spacecraft Integration, Space Technnology Labs. Supervised 20-25 people.

(4) Project Manager, OGO-E Plasma Wave Detector Project. TRW Systems - contract value -- $1.3 Million.

(5) Project Manager, Pioneer Electric Field Detector Project. TRW Systems - contract value $235 K.

(6) Assistant Project Manager for Scientific Experiments for the Particles and Fields Satellite Project.(This was a scientific spacecraft that was launched into an orbit around the moon from the Apollo 16 spacecraft.) TRW Systems - contract value (experiments) $1 Million.

(7) Department Manager, Advanced Techniques Department, TRW Systems for 5 -3/4 years. Department's burdened expenditure rate was about $400 K/year.

(8) Very active in proposals and have managed and contributed to many proposals.

(9) In 1972, I left TRW and became self employed as a design consultant, under the name of "Gaines M. Crook & Associates". In 1974, there appeared to be an opportunity for testing telephone terminal equipment for "Certification" under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission. Due to my considerable experience in the interpretation of specifications and design of equipment to test to specific specifications, I decided that I would enter this activity. Later (late 1975) the FCC preempted the CPUC in the terminal equipment field with its "Registration" program under Part 68. I then established my company as a qualified laboratory to perform this work. This has been the prime support of the company, since. 

In 1978, the name of the company was changed to GMC Laboratories, after my initials. When the FCC established Subpart J of Part 15 of its Rules requiring the measurement of the electromagnetic emissions of electronic equipment we decided to become a qualified laboratory in this field also, since by this time much of the telephone terminal equipment we received for test contained microprocessors and had to be tested for Part 15, Subpart J also. This deals with the measurement of electromagnetic interference generated by electronic equipment. This activity continued until the end of 1996.

ADDITIONAL DATA 
[1] Registered Professional Engineer in California in both Mechanical and Electrical Engineering.

[2] Senior Life Member, Institute of Electrical and Elec tronics Engineers.

[3] Member, (although not active in many years) US Commission IV (Magnetospheric Radio) of URSI (International Scientific Radio Union).

[4] Author or coauthor of 14 technical papers for scientif ic journals and a chapter in the book, ”Plasma Waves in Space and Laboratory,”edited by F. O. Thomas and B. F. Landmark , Edinburgh University Press.

[5] Selected by NASA Headquarters Office of Science and Technology as Principal Investigator for a Plasma Wave Detector Experiment (E-24) on the OGO-E spacecraft. 

[6] Acted as a consultant to the German Government Space Agency (Gesellschaft fur Weltraumforschung) on matters of magnetic fields and electrostatic equipotential surfaces on spacecraft (spacecraft charging).

[7] Member of the 1967-1969 TRW Corporation's "Future Probe" technology forecasting team.

[8] Holds eight patents and an additional one has been allowed and will be issued shortly.

[9] F.C.C. Radiotelephone, General Class License (formerly First Class).

[10] Acted as expert witness for Pacific Bell in a court case with Phonetele, Inc., concerning the registerability of the Phonemaster toll restrictor. Also have been re-tained by Pacific Bell legal Dept. concerning in other matters.

[11] Past-President of the San Fernando Valley Chapter of the California Society of Professional Engineers.


PARTIAL LIST OF PUBLICATIONS 
Crook, G.M., E.W. Greenstadt and G.T. Inouye
Distant Electromagnetic Observations of the High Altitude 
Nuclear Detonations of July 9, 1962.
J.Geophys. Res., 68, 1781, 1963 

Scarf, F.L., G.M. Crook, and R.W. Fredricks 
Preliminary Report on Detection of Electrostatic Ion Waves 
in the Magnetosphere.
J. Geophys. Res., 70, 3045, 1965

Scarf, F.L., G.M. Crook and R.W. Fredricks
Survey of VLF Electric Fields in the Magnetosphere with the 
Polar Orbiting Spacecraft 1964-45A 
Radio Science, 1, 939, 1966
Scarf, F.L., R.W. Fredricks and G.M. Crook
Detection of Electromagnetic and Electrostatic Waves on 
OV3-3 
J. Geophys., Res. 73, 1723, 1968

Scarf, F.L., G.M. Crook, R.W. Fredricks, I.M. Green and C.F. Kennel.
Observation of Plasma Waves in Space. Plasma Waves in Space and in the Laboratory. (Edinburgh University Press, 1969)

Scarf, F.L., G.M. Crook, I.M. Green, and P. Virobik. 
Initial Results of the Pioneer 8 VLF Electric Field Experiment.
J. Geophys. Res., 73, 6665, 1968

Fredricks, R.W., C.F. Kennel, F.L. Scarf, G.M. Crook and I.M. Green.
Detections of Electric Field Turbulence in the Earth's Bow Shock.
Phys. Rev. Letters. (no date) 

Crook, G.M., F.L. Scarf, R.W. Fredricks, I.M. Green and P. Lukas.
The OGO-5 Plasma Wave Detector: Instrumentation and In-Flight Operations.
Invited Contributions for the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience Electronics: Special Issue on Orbiting Geophysical Observatory Instrumentation, 31 Jan. 1969

Scarf, F.L., C.F. Kennel, R.W. Fredricks, I.M. Green and 
G.M. Crook.
AC Fields and Wave Particle Interactions in “Particle and Fields in the Magnetosphere”.
Edited by B.M. McCormac, D. Reidel Publishing Co.
Dordrecht - Holland 1970

R.W. Fredricks, G.M. Crook, C.F. Kennel, I.M. Green, F.L. Scarf, P.J. Coleman and C.T. Russell.
OGO-5 Observations of Electrostatic Turbulence in the Bow 
Shock Magnetic Structure.
J. Geophys. Res., 75, 3751, 1970.

Crook, Gaines M.
A Binary Controlled Transmission
Paper presented at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Mechanisms Conference and International Symposium on Gearing and Transmissions, San Francisco,California, October 8-12, 1972. Published in ASME Paper 72-Mech-59
“Mechanism Case Studies”, R.S. Berkof, American Can Co.,
Princeton, N.J. 

Crook, Gaines M.
Designing to Pass Part 15
IEEE/Wescon invited paper presented at the 1986 Wescon Show & Convention, Anaheim, CA, November 18-20, 1986 and published in the "Professional Program Session Record 37".

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The Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947

Michael D. Hall & Wendy A. Connors provided, in 1998, a book entitled Alfred Loedding & the Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947 in which this excerpt appears (in a Special Preface):

"We must be cautious of the hubris of the present. When UFOs first appeared in numbers during the great flying saucer wave of 1947, few people made the jump to an extraterrestrial hypothesis. 

The subject of this book, Alfred Loedding, is significant because he did eventually lean toward that assumption. Because he played such an instrumental role in the first official Air Force investigation into the phenomena, it is important to analyze the progression of his theories.

 For the best part of the summer of 1947 most serious minds studying the flying disc mystery, like Alfred Loedding, considered that a domestic secret project might account for the sightings. After eliminating that possibility, the "foreign origin" option was exhaustively explored. By 1948 foreign origin became a catch word for visitors from outer space, but in 1947 it meant only one thing—Russians. In fact, worries that the Soviet Union may have gleaned a Nazi super weapon at the end of the Second World War remained in the minds of Air Force officials up through 1952. 

But by late 1947 some aeronautical engineers, like Alfred Loedding, began to consider that "flying saucers" may represent intelligently controlled machines from another world. Why? What was the mind set in 1947 that could rationalize such a conclusion? What was his perspective? Where was the proof? 

It is very difficult with our 1998 view of popular culture to consider a time when there was no extensive set of preconceptions on extraterrestrial life..."

The book is available, free, on the web/internet, and I suggest that some of you newbies (and a few oldies) get your hands on it, to enlighten yourselves about the flying saucer context at the beginning of the modern era of UFOs.

RR

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UFOs: The Fascinating Eras

Copyright 2014, InterAmerica, Inc.

UFOs, as an evanescent phenomenon or a serious phenomenon, remain for some of us an intriguing mystery.

I’ve divided, for myself, the phenomenon into to arbitrary categories that hold my interest.

UFO sightings from ancient times, up into the 1800s – best illuminated in the Aubeck/Vallee collection, Wonders in the Sky [Jeremy p.Tarcher/Penguin, NY, 2009] – is a compendium that enlightens the mystery, the phenomenon, in a way that isn’t so much scientific but mystical, for me.

The events noted from various sources/collections has to create, for inquisitive minds, something worthy of rumination. For instance, take this event from 1752:

A man named “Yaska” reportedly met a stranger dressed in white who took him to a flying cauldron. He believed he visited another world, and then returned to Earth. [Page 257]

The book’s litany of such items takes us to, without really going further, to the Airship wave of the 1890s, which continued into the early 1900s.

The Airship sightings, no matter how interpreted, can be viewed with a kind of journalistic awe, they are so rife with imaginative content.

Then, from 1947 into the 1960s, flying saucer and UFO reports provide the core of the sci-fi-like aspect of the phenomenon.

We have the iconic Kenneth Arnold/Mt. Rainier sighting of 1947 and a plethora of other sightings (Roswell excluded) that stir one’s imagination.

These include such sightings as the Chiles-Whitted observation, the Washington D.C, radar intrusions, plus dozens of others, supplemented by the contactee tales, which have been well accounted in Nick Redfern’s book, Contactees.

In that period are the odd encounters, mostly in Europe and South America, such as the Lotti/Italy event and the Petare, Venezuela episode of 1954, but also a few in the States as Flatwoods and the Kelly/Hopkinsville confrontation of 1955.

These “encounters” with strange creatures, small and large, invite queries for those who want to know just exactly what was going on.

There is the Villas-Boas “abduction” event and the 1961 Betty/Barney Hill kidnapping, the 1964 Socorro incident plus the farcical 1966 “swamp gas” sighting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that besmirched UFO accounts, from then on out, because the investigator used an explanation that was errant on its face but stuck with the public/media mind.

No many important sightings until the 1975 Travis Walton experience, which created the alien abduction scenario one last time.

(Although the 1978 resurrected Roswell story took hold of the ufological imagination, that matter isn’t grist for me and others who see something fundamentally profound in the phenomenon itself, which has nothing to do with extraterrestrial visitations.)

Despite a few somewhat significant UFO sightings after 1975 (Phoenix, Stephenville, and O’Hare), the UFO phenomenon has settled into a backwater of probative inquiry by news media and saner elements of society.

The phenomenon has become anthropological or archaeological fodder for those, like myself, who still find the topic interesting.

UFOs have had their heyday, and the subject is old-hat now, and not worthy of time or money, except by the vestigial remnants of UFO aficionados who have little else on their existent plates.

RR 

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Those Late 19th Century Airships

As there continues to be some interest in the Airship wave(s) of the late 1800s, let me provide a link to an interesting account, said not to be fictive:

http://home.earthlink.net/~trolleyfan/lpa.html

These quotes apply to Professor Lowe who was indicated as the Airship creator, noted in the story (of the link):

"By 1858 he was actively engaged in his life-work of conquering the almost, to others, insoluble problems of Aeronautics, and many other great utilities.

He made a balloon voyage from Cincinnati, Ohio, at 4 a. m, on April 20th, 1861, and at noon on the same day descended near the ocean in South Carolina. traveling a distance of 800 miles.

Professor Lowe came West in 1887, and immediately started work in Southern California. The great mountain railway, Alpine Tavern and the Observatory were opened in 1894, and materially aided the Southland on its momentous career of advertisement and advancement."

My position is not that the 1896 airship wave was extraterrestrial but consisted of attempts by human engineers, inventors, and adventurers to create aerial craft, using techniques of the time, many from what was garnered from balloonists of earlier eras (as I've noted in previous postings here).

Here is a link to efforts, a little later than 1896, to create flying machines, using balloon technology:

http://cabanus.e-monsite.com/pages/les-dirigeables/la-belle-epoque-1909-1910.html

The "history" of the Airships is fascinating, but corrupted by those trying to make the sightings into extraterrestrial forays, confused further by skeptics who take the ET efforts seriously, providing a faux counter to an already foolish idea -- that the airships were ET-originated.

RR

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Intelligent Plants and No-so Intelligent UFO People

The current issue of The New Yorker [January 27^th, 2014] has Mail (to the Editor) about the recent article by Michael Pollan [The Intelligent Plant, December 23/30] which I used as a foray into UFOs being manned by intelligent alien plants.

Tobias Baskin, Professor in the Biology Department of The University of Massachussetts took author Pollan to task by opening his letter with this:

“Michael Pollan reports on a debate over whether plants have intelligence; they don’t.”

Professor Baskin goes on to equate plant movement with acclimation, saying “any resemblance to our intelligence [by plants] is superficial … The purpose of acclimation and intelligence is similar. But the means differ; it is the means that defines phenomena in biology.”

Mark W. Moffett of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution countered with a litany of plants that, for survival, appear to have thought, citing nomadic plants, such as the common philodendron which “meander through a tree’s canopy, acting like a snake searching for a place to bask.”

He goes on: “when  a canopy-dwelling plant, such as an orchid, falls from a tree, it’s likely to perish in the under-story shade. But the philodendron simply uncoils itself, crawls over to the nearest tree trunk, and climbs up again.”

Civilized ripostes by two academics, something we don’t get in UFO debates.

I recently received a comment from a somewhat known UFO aficionado. I didn’t publish the comment as it was filled with invective and spite, as the person tried to make points countering my views of his hypothesis about drug use affecting mental stimulation, causing UFO experiences.

He was angry that I didn’t post his comment.

But why would I do that? His whole purpose wasn’t to enlighten anyone; he merely wanted to cut me down to size or try to, envious that this blog gets much more attention than anything he does regarding UFOs.

I don’t go to other blogs, to be seen or to make comments furthering my UFO views.

And some who come here wish that I would provide their views for observation by visitors here, as there are more of them and my visitors are the crème de la crème of UFO mavens.

But me curtailing snide remarks by such persons irks them, as they think I should open my venue to their castigations, which may be likened to opening one’s home to riff-raff so they can come in and spit on the floor.

Yes, I’m short-tempered with uncivil and ignorant UFO persons. And I despise the incivility of some who think their remarks are god-inspired, allowing them to be nasty and stupid, in my spot on the internet.

Plants do have intelligence. That’s a given in some quarters.

Some UFO people do not have intelligence. That’s obvious from their comments and web-sites or blogs.

Such people should shrivel up and die, metaphorically of course.

And I want to be part of that group that refuses to water the roots of their jealous spite and irrational ravings.

After all, my ravings are more than I can contend with as it is…

RR

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Martian soup bowl discovered?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/yahoo-news/mysterious-rock-found-by-mars-rover-145712301.html

RR

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The Book of Miracles: Medieval UFOs

These are pictures (sent to me from Jose Caravaca) found in The Book of Miracles, on sale at Amazon for $101.

Apocalypse then: Newly uncovered illuminations from the Renaissance depicting miraculous phenomena

The Book of Miracles that first surfaced a few years ago and recently made its way into an American private collection is one of the most spectacular new discoveries in the field of Renaissance art. The nearly complete surviving illustrated manuscript, which was created in the Swabian Imperial Free City of Augsburg around 1550, is composed of 169 pages with large-format illustrations in gouache and watercolor depicting wondrous and often eerie celestial phenomena, constellations, conflagrations, and floods as well as other catastrophes and occurrences. It deals with events ranging from the creation of the world and incidents drawn from the Old Testament, ancient tradition, and medieval chronicles to those that took place in the immediate present of the book’s author and, with the illustrations of the visionary Book of Revelation, even includes the future end of the world.

The surprisingly modern-looking, sometimes hallucinatory illustrations and the cursory descriptions of the Book of Miracles strikingly convey a unique view of the concerns and anxieties of the 16th century, of apocalyptic thinking and eschatological expectation. The present facsimile volume reproduces the Book of Miracles in its entirety for the first timeand thus makes one of the most important works of the German Renaissance finally available to art lovers and scholars. The introduction puts the codex in its cultural and historical context, and an extensive description of the manuscript and its miniatures, as well as a complete transcript of the text, accompany the facsimile in an appendix.

·                                 Hardcover: 568 pages

·                                 Publisher: Taschen; Har/Pap Fa edition (January 1, 2014)

·                                 Language: English

·                                 ISBN-10: 3836542854

·                                 ISBN-13: 978-3836542852

 RR

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Mind Alteration and UFO Encounters/Abductions

Some ufologists consider the use of psychedelics as one of the possible causes for some UFO events; that is, the percipients have a UFO experience that stems from ingesting chemicals that induce hallucinatory images thought to be reality.

Shamanistic practices worked similarly, but without the UFO overlay.

Richard Bucke in his masterwork, Cosmic Consciousness [E.P. Dutton and Company, NY, 1901] provides examples of visions and mental states derived from the affects of Chloroform [Page 379 ff.].

“flashes of intense light, out-of-body experience, the presence of another, and telepathic thoughts.”

(Some of these experiences mimic the so-called Near Death Experience.)

Other chemical and drugs – Bucke notes that alcohol produces bastard stimulations like those noted above – along with adverse food reactions, neurological qlitches, and psychological malfunctions can create perverse observations of reality, UFO abductions and encounters in those predilected to things with a sci-fi bent.

The Travis Walton abduction is grist, I think, for such an explanation, the Pascagoula episode also.

The Hill’s “abduction” could be based upon a carbon monoxide leak in their car – did anyone ever pursue that possibility? – or effects from what they last ate before heading home.

Okay, we know that UFOs are seen or recorded (film and radar) but encounters and abductions are not.

UFOs provide the mental stimuli (or premise in fraud reportings) for some who think they’ve been taken aboard an extraterrestrial craft, but it’s what has affected their brains that produces the hallucinatory stories that are related to “researchers.”

Hypnosis merely exacerbates the hallucinatory event; hypnosis doesn’t provide truth of a tangible reality.

For moderate UFO mavens, alien abduction is a mental or bogus canard, while UFOs remain a viable phenomenon, worthy of research and discussion, for those inclined to such ephemeral “realities.”

RR

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We are all connected...ETs, us, skeptics, and nuts

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/astronomers-capture-first-image-mysterious-180000277.html

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The Roswell Slides? Or the Aztec Slides?

Copyright 2014, InterAmerica, Inc.

Noted Spanish UFO researcher Jose Antonio Caravaca has found this document (about an oil drilling request for Sedona, Arizona) from the Oil and gas Conservation Commission of Arizona (The document dates from April 1965):

Commission Document (Click the download original spot to get paper)

Inside the document is this:

Newton

Señor Caravaca provides the material to bolster my conjecture that Aztec is really Roswell, which Frank Warren and Scott Ramsey dismiss as they are convinced that Aztec is a valid, verifiable flying saucer accident as outlined in the famous Frank Scully book, Behind the Flying Saucers[1950] and Anthony Bragalia, Tom Carey, Schmitt, et al. (The Roswell Investigations Team) eschew because they’ve invested so much time and effort in attempting to show that some slides, recently discovered, are of an alien from the alleged crash of a flying saucer near Roswell in 1947.

Here’s the nub of the story as the Roswell team understands it:

A geologist, Bernerd Ray, while on a trek with other geologists, near Roswell in 1947, stumbled upon an Army contingent protecting an other-worldly looking being.

Geologist Ray surreptitiously snapped, despite warnings from the military not to mention the matter, a few photos.

Geologist Ray’s wife. Hilda, hid the photos (Kodachrome slides) that recently surfaced during an estate resolution of her home and contents in Sedona, Arizona.

The persons in possession of the slides, along with the Roswell team, will present the slides at a news conference this year (2014).

During a review of the slides-finding, I (and others) discovered that Bernerd Ray went to work with Silas Newton shortly after 1947, during which, I suggest, he showed the slides to Newton (and Frank Scully’s wife) from which the Aztec story evolved, although the slides were taken of an incident in Roswell: the 1947 Roswell event that was covered up by the U.S. Army.

Now the questions that derive from this mangled story are these:

Did geologist Ray actually take his photos at Roswell, as circumstantial evidence seems to confirm?

Or are the slides, found hidden in the Ray home, actually slides of the Aztec beings that Skully, Ramsey, and Warren indicate were outside the alleged saucer crash in Aztec in March 1948, and ended up in the hands of Bernerd Ray?

How can we know, for certain, that the slides are from Roswell? We can’t.

There are, as far as I know, no verifiable elements in the slides themselves that prove they were taken near Roswell.

But were photos of the Aztec saucer crew taken by Bernerd Ray or someone he knew, and ended up in his possession, and ultimately hidden by his wife, Hilda, after her husband’s death? And why were they hidden?

If Aztec is an extrapolated story generated by Silas Newton after seeing photos taken by geologist Ray, why? (To further a Newton scheme that ended up in a fraud trial?)

What is the determinate provenance of the slides?

Yes, they are Kodak Kodachrome slides from the 1947 time-frame.

Bernerd Ray was on a field trip near Roswell in the July 1947 time-frame.

And the Ray’s were connected to notables such as President Eisenhower, indicating some claim to credibility and significant cachet. How did that come about?

Were the photos proffered to Frank Scully’s wife the very same slides that are now about to make a public appearance?

Or are the slides from a saucer crash at Aztec that Scully, Warren, and Ramsey think is an authentic UFO event?

The sensible view is that Bernerd Ray took some photos on slide film in 1947, likely from a geological stint, and his slides are from an accident of some kind near Roswell, which was the premise for the Flying Disk Found by the Army press release and ultimate Roswell incident story that befuddles and consumes UFO mavens to this day.

Aztec is a Silas Newton fiction that has little in the way of hard evidence.

But either way, the slides do not prove anything, except that a being of some kind was photographed.

Where, When, and What remain open to question.

RR

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The Hill "Abduction" -- Morphing Details?

While skimming Patrick Huyghe's The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials, with illustrations by Harry Trumbore [Avon Books, NY, 1996], I came across the précis of the 1961 Betty/Barney Hill abduction taken from John Fuller's The Interrupted Journey [Dial Press, NY, 1966].

I had, from an earlier reading, yellow-penciled this:

"... Betty remembered large noses and black hair" on the aliens who, allegedly, took her and Barney aboard their craft. [Page 30]

Then this:

"Barney recalled that the leader wore a cap and black scarf over the shoulder." [Pages 30/31]

Illustrated by Mr. Trumbore, thusly....

Now I ask, when did the alien descriptions morph into little grey beings, with bald heads, no hair, and slits for the nostrils?

Yes, Barney attributed slits for the nose (nostrils) and no hair on the beings that supposedly kidnapped him and Betty, but his description is befunked by the cap and scarf designations.

We've dealt with the Jimmy Durante nose description by Betty earlier here, when I suggested that the Hills may have been confronted by rednecks in a truck who closed in on them and engaged in harassment (or worse), presenting a traumatic event that the Hills repressed and reconfigured under hypnosis -- creating the story that has come down to us as an extraterrestrial abduction.

The large nose, black hair, cap and scarf are details that have been suppressed or changed by ufologists, but remain clues to what actually happened to Betty and Barney Hill.

Those details mitigate the alien/extraterrestrial aspect of the Hill tale, but the UFO-ET crowd has eschewed them.

RR

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Conspiracy Theorists vs Conspiracists

CDA has a comment below in my "Do what you gotta do" post, and has had comments at Kevin Randle's blog, that deal with the concepts of conspiracy, a matter that intrudes upon, and is basic to, the UFO community.

Let me add to the topic by providing this from David Runciman in his review for The London Review of Books [January 9th, 2014, Page 31] of Alex Ferguson's My Autobiography:

"Alex Ferguson is a conspiracist, which is not the same as being a conspiracy theorist. Conspiracists see patterns of collusion and deceit behind everyday events. Their default position is that someone somewhere is invariably planning something. Conspiracy theorists go further: they want to join up the dots and discover the overarching pattern that makes sense of seemingly unrelated happenings. They are looking for the single explanation that underwrites everything. A conspiracist thinks that nothing is entirely innocent. A conspiracy theorist thinks that nothing is entirely incidental. Conspriracists can be devious, suspicious, confrontational and difficult to be around but they are also capable of making their way in the world, leveraging their paranoia into real power. Conspiracy theorists are often simply nuts."

RR

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“Do what you gotta do.”

That quote is from NBC’s Chicago PD show that aired on Wednesday night, 1/15, at 10 p.m.

It represents what the ongoing plan for this blog will be; that is, it tells the mind-set going forward for this blog.

The UFO phenomenon is, for me, an interesting thing but a topic marred by sociopaths, liars, and cranks – loons as Paul Kimball tags them.

Lance Moody did the legwork that removed Philip J. Imbrogno who posed as an academic he wasn’t.

Paul Kimball has a book coming forth soon about other UFO charlatans, scientific deviants, and  reprobates.

If the good people in the UFO community ban together, they can marginalize or eliminate the goofs and nasties who lie and disrupt the pursuit of an explanation for an enigma that deserves proper scrutiny without the corruption brought on by those whom we all know are psychologically remiss.

So, it’s time to cite those who work from envy, mental disorientation, and vulgarity. You know their names. 

Now comes the time to do them in.

RR

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Alien Earth-like Planet

http://www.space.com/24287-alien-planet-solar-twin-discovery-video.html

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The Lazarus Effect

I closed this blog for a few days. 

I am sorry for distressing: Anthony Bragalia, Frank Warren, Jose Antonio Caravaca, Lance Moody, infakiro, Paul Kimball, and Chris Savia (Anomalist editor and moderator of Who Forted?, which I excoriated recently for having a slightly vulgar title).

Nick Redfern and a few others, didn’t even know this blog was down – they check in so infrequently.

I did get distress signals from persons who apparently read the blog – we get about 1500 hits each day – but never comment.

Yes, I know, they may eschew commentary to avoid snarky remonstrance from me, and that is understandable.

Anyway, the blog is back. And I hope, edifying to some extent.

So, again, I’m almost sorry for the angst I caused. You, who know me, understand.

RR 

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The Ark of the Covenant -- What happened to it?

http://news.yahoo.com/fate-ark-covenant-revealed-hebrew-text-122635990.html

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UFOs or God? (We’ll take UFOs)

Copyright 2014, InterAmerica, Inc.

Reading The Book of Job: A Biography by Mark Larrimore [Princeton University Press, NJ, 2013, $24.95] re-affirms for me that God is (or was – since I think He’s dead) a psychotic, not-quite omnipotent bastard.

That out of the way, there are elements in The Book of Jobwhich could quell an Alien Astronaut theorist’s heart. 

From an apocryphal work, The Testament of Job [an Egyptian work attributed to the Therapeutae movement, written somewhere between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D.], comes this: 

“he who sat in the great chariot got out and greeted job[ab]” and took his soul (LII, 647) 

And from the midrash on Job in Baba Bathra, part of the Babylonian Talmud comes this: 

God “gave Job a taste of the future world.” 

And from The Old Testament [Douay Version], Chapters 38;1 and 40:6 is this: 

“Then  the Lord addressed Job out of the storm.” 

Job, at the end of his tormenting and colloquy with God indicates he had an epiphany, a cosmic consciousness moment – Chapter 42:3 [Douay]: 

"I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know. I had heard of you by word of mouth but now my eye has seen you.” 

(The new book, which opens this topic, addresses the various interpretations of The Book of Job and winds down with the matter of Shoah, or the Holocaust and the absence of God during that horrible time for Jews and humanity.) 

My concern here is the choice of God or the choice of UFOs. 

If there is an alien astronaut connection within the poetry and prose of The Book of Job, I leave that to others to discuss.

If there are those who think that God and the theology attendant to Him is separate from the UFO phenomenon, I leave that for them to debate. 

Here, I choose to offer that God has evaporated (or died); he’s, at least, silent to the point that he may as well be dead. [See Friedman book noted in an earlier posting here]

What we have is a choice to pursue a phenomenon that has an apparent tangibility or reality, or we have a God that is immaterial, for our time, and useless as a phenomenon, as the European Jews found out in the 1940s. 

We can touch UFOs [Michalak] but we can’t touch God, as was possible for Moses’ wife Sepphora [Exodus 4:24] since God has either died or is hiding out [Friedman, op. cit]. 

And while a UFO may not offer us sustenance or treasure, a UFO won’t torment or destroy us as God did with Job and his family. 

If I have my druthers, I’ll stick with UFOs (for now) and leave God to “the ignorant multitude.” [Larrimore, Page 83]

 RR 

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