SETI IS THE NICKELBACK OF UFOLOGY AND SETH SHOSTAK IS ITS LEAD SINGER -- plus – THIS HOLIDAY GIFT TO YOU

Apologies to Space Pen Club blog readers and Facebook group members. I’m way behind as the Holidays roll on --  and late with “content” – like that UFO/UAP report from ODNI that was due on Halloween. But here is an overview of the recent quasi-summit in New York City December 2, 2022. Titled, “An Inquiry Into Anomalous Experiences & The Phenomenon,” the 7+ hour presentation in lower Manhattan didn’t reveal any new earthquaking moments from its presenters. Those included Best-selling author and researcher, Leslie Kean and fellow reporter and author Ralph Blumenthal, who with the Times’ Pentagon reporter Helene Cooper (who made a cameo via video at the event) broke the UFO taboo barrier with their front-page New York Times story on December 17, 2017 (Happy Anniversary!)

But it did serve as a déjà vu for people who may have lost track of the individual and yet collective narratives of its star attractions. Ok, there were a couple of minor revelations, titillating tremors to tickle audience members in theater and online streaming. But keep reading to see them.

Joining Kean and Blumenthal was that olde warhorse of contact and Communion and harboring an alleged (can we say, “alien”) ear implant, author Whitley Strieber. They were flanked by academics Jeffrey Kripal and Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, who both explored the “consciousness connection” to the phenomenon, the true final frontier in this discussion IMO. The conference saved Christopher Mellon for last, who with Lue Elizondo has become a de facto Poster Person for disclosure, sharing that title with Kean from week to week. Mellon is a deep government mover and shaker as the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administration.

Here’s the link and Password. It’s my Holiday Gift to you, such as it is.

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/play/P4MFlZaXBfqDR33xEoOn1pA9wAHt44EdCD0bLr8dM0Zdre8mqHPjuiR7G25hzsfdJKaNUnRdj0FIccZZ.2OUnZvg70NONI01L?continueMode=true&_x_zm_rtaid=Y4kAkboZRPW2oFZ-Uhp75A.1672338608306.94574f9faeab9293178d1949b9763ec2&_x_zm_rhtaid=820

Password:

!AN_INQUIRY_DAY_2!

Here are the timecodes:

Jeffrey J Kripal 0:00

Ralph Blumenthal 01:05:16

Whitley Strieber 02:22:05

Leslie Kean 04:14:10

Sharon Hewitt Rawlette 4:54:50

Christopher Mellon with Leslie Kean 05:42:27

Sorta Breaking News from the Conference

For my money ($30 to view the stream, although I almost ventured to the Enchanted Island to take in the proceedings with my fellow long-suffering students of the genre), here are the true newsy items from the event:

1)      Kean and Blumenthal are working on another NY Times story or stories but wouldn’t say what they were.

2)      Blumenthal offered a passing comment about the synchronicities involved while working on his John Mack biography, The Believer. (This is a puzzling, seductive motif that seems to be prevalent in the accounts of many “experiencers,”  including my own.)

3)      The CNN series Kean was involved with that was due to air last summer has been pushed back to next year after lots of shuffling at CNN which is scrambling to rearrange the deck chairs on its sometimes sinking, always shifting programming and brand. Apparently, the series was sold to a new entity and will see daylight within the first six months of ‘23.

4)      Mellon commented that the Air Force should be held accountable for what it knows – and to some degree, it may be in contempt of Congress for its lack on engagement in the ongoing hearings. (Probably the most incendiary thing said over the marathon event.)

5)      No one knew why the UFO report due on October 31 is so late. As of today, 12-28-22, it’s still MIA (although Mellon assured us that “this is a Congress that cares.” So don’t lose faith in the process, he pronounced).

6)      Strieber went deep into his personal story, which was surprising, time-consuming and a tad redundant,  given that probably the majority of the audience already knows that tale. Most intriguing was his discussion of the alleged implant in his ear.

7)      Mellon concluded that the phenomenon “has a net positive effect,” and that by resolving what it is and revealing its origins – in other words, blasting away the malignant secrecy of the past 70+ years with a few tons of dynamite --  it may help us better navigate the problems the global community faces collectively, including climate change and AI impacts.  

8)      A Quote of the Day from Charles Richet, the 1931 Nobel Prize winner for Medicine, as shared by Blumenthal:

 MEAWHILE, THE EMPIRE SWATS BACK. AGAIN

We have more work to do in the New Year, especially with A-list media like The Wall Street Journal still spouting nonsense on topic – 2 really bad and circumspect Op Eds in the last couple months (sorry, if u r unable to scale any paywall). That included one from guest columnist Seth Shostak, the shill, er spokesman for the intellectually bankrupt SETI, which has contributed next to nothing to the field of understanding UAP or UFOs or Ovnis (Unknowns, as they say in Mexico), or the Whatever You Care to Call Them. (WYCTCT).  Personally, but not passionately, I wish this aging organization would find something – anything – to prevent its reputation as the Nickelback of UFOLOGY from fossilizing in the annals of UAP.

But you know, SETI is all about the science of the sky, science locked in the most anthropocentric feedback loop that you can imagine. But I’m getting ahead of myself. His latest boner is ridiculously titled, Could the Government Really Coverup UFOs?  Apparently, SS doesn’t know much US history, especially the clandestine periods where all manner of “coverup” run rampant. Your chronicler will just say that some days, Shostak is so tone deaf and chronically myopic that he makes The NY Times’ Julian Barnes (another hiss-boom-bah cheerleader for the status quo that never was) sound like J. Allen Hynek.

Seth’s Greatest Hits, This Time Around (italics – and a little deserved snark -- deployed wherever needed to underscore insults to intellect and UAP IQ).

·         “The intelligence agencies say that their motivation is to identify these objects, now christened UAPs, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. That’s clearly in the interest of national security. The UAPs could be Chinese drones or other craft that the Department of Defense should know about.”

Yawn. I think even Ronald S. Moultrie (undersecretary of Defence for intelligence and security) is off this Talking Point.

·         “But while the aliens might be out there, it would be difficult for them to come here. Consider what would be required for them to pay a house call, even if the nearest extraterrestrials were a mere 10 light years away, a trivial distance by astronomical standards. To reach Earth in 50 years, a spacecraft the size of a small house would need an energy source able to pump out as many kilowatt-hours as the entire U.S. burns in a year, a requirement independent of the technology of the rocket. A ticket wouldn’t be cheap.”

What’s cheap is the facile assumption that “they” get here from “there” the same way we cretins rocket to the moon and beyond.

·         “Maybe some aliens are sufficiently keen to meet their neighbors that they’re willing to pay the price and endure the trip. But is there good evidence that they have? Aside from the Navy reports, what proof can we offer? It’s hard to believe that these cosmic visitors would have made the long journey just for the chance to tease our military aviators.”

And maybe space exploration from other parts of the galaxy is just so Sputnik-era-passe, too, that discovering and documenting this planet of evolved apes is no big deal to these space-ferrying explorers.

·         “Many of the [UFO] sightings are accompanied by cellphone videos, but these are invariably ambiguous, usually showing only unsteady, small sources of light in the night sky. Frankly, for scientists, such sightings don’t carry much weight; eyewitness testimony is the weakest form of evidence.”

Tell it to the juries – like George Floyd’s -- who convicted the cop who killed him based, in part, on cell phone evidence shot at the murder site by a traumatized Black teenage girl.

·         “For other types of evidence, the pickings are equally slim. There are approximately 8,000 active satellites in orbit around the Earth, many of them continuously imaging our planet. This nonstop reconnaissance has failed to find any alien craft.”

This so lame, it doesn’t deserve comment.

·         And so it goes, all the way to the bloody, limp dick end.

Rock on Seth Shostak. Chad Kroeger’s got nothin’ on you!