French scientist, inventor, and investor Jacques Vallee has been investigating the UFO phenomenon for perhaps five or six decades now, has traveled all over the world in his quest for knowledge, and has written several books on the UFO phenomenon.
His most recent book, “Trinity: The Best Kept Secret” is a very detailed investigation of a UFO crash which happened in 1945, two years before Roswell, and only some twenty days after and twenty miles away from the site of the detonation of the first atomic bomb.
Vallee is a very educated man and an unusually perceptive and complex thinker, and his view is that the “extraterrestrial hypothesis” is far too simple a one to encompass and explain the complex UFO phenomenon; a UFO phenomenon which is full of “absurdity,” and Vallee believes that this absurdity is in fact a control mechanism, one designed to “create a mythology,” to push people to think in new directions.*
P.S.–As I understand it, Vallee believes that the intelligence behind the UFO phenomenon is the same intelligence which has been with the human race for a very long time, appearing in different guise, wearing a different mask, depending on the particular stage of human development i.e. an elemental spirit, a god or goddess, a thing of folklore, etc.–see his thesis laid out in his book “Passport to Magonia.”
P.P.S.–If you are interested in his book “Trinity,” note that there is now a revised and expanded version available.
It’s interesting that while blaming the problem on funding he doesn’t address the failure to maintain order or standards.
Great video. Much to think about. Architectural history takes in a lot more than bricks and mortar. Graphic reminder of how bad tenement living was. And even better-off people didn’t have much in the way of stuff, whereas many of us today are drowning in it. I was also pleased to find out the the distinguished brownstones that Theodore Roosevelt and the characters of Edith Wharton grew up in were the tract housing of the day.
neo:
More interesting than I was expecting, nonetheless it brings to mind this classic from 1976:
One can pour anything into them and extract everything from them, except for things that aren’t speculation speculation.
Indeed, one claim is that UFOs can have a larger internal volume than is possible based on the speculated exterior dimensions, speculated, since, of course, there are no recorded dimensions of the exterior or interior of any UFO.
But you know that there are many types of UFOs and many species of alien intelligences, aka, little green “men.”
Someone else’s problem.
Re: Railroad apartments
In New Orleans we called them shotgun apartments because … well, you figure it out.
We have shotgun houses around here. Small single homes with a hall running from front to back and rooms opening on one side. In fact, not far from here is a very attractive little subdivision of shotgun houses with parking spaces behind and a community swimming pool.
If:
1) Trump + Biden become the candidates for the 2024 election,
and
2) Trump doesn’t debate Biden before the election-
is there a [very, good chance] that Trump will win the Presidential election, in 2024?
TR (4:45 pm) asks,
“is there a [very, good chance] that Trump will win the Presidential election, in 2024?”
There is (in my rarely humble opinion) *no* chance that Trump is (re-)inaugurated president in January 2025. There is no chance that Trump “wins” the 2024 presidential election, whatever in the world that may mean these days.
The Republican Party is not, as far as I can tell*, at all prepared for the vicious lawfare that would/will certainly accompany the 2024 balloting if there is any sign that Trump might actually be competitive — and even if they somehow become prepared, they will not be inclined to go to bat for Trump.
* but I am *no* insider, so there’s that
As Abraxas noted in “How could I have forgotten”:
RIP Jimmy Buffett
He was more of cult act, but still wonderful in my book. His Parrothead following hasn’t reached Deadhead proportions, but is respectable. In spite of his beach bum/drug smuggler image he amassed an entrepreneurial fortune of around $1`bil.
His music is plain old-fashioned fun, though not without (mildly) moral teachings. Take a close listen to “Margaritaville” sometime and notice the narrator’s arc from “it’s nobody’s fault” to “it’s my own damn fault.”
_______________________________________
Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
But I know it’s my own damn fault
@VigilantFox
What the Media & Big Pharma Won’t Tell You About the Pfizer Clinical Trials, as Explained by RFK Jr.
“For every life they save by preventing a death from COVID, they are killing four people from cardiac arrest.”
• In the Pfizer clinical trials, they gave 22,000 people two COVID injections and 22,000 people fake vaccines.
• Of the 44,000 in total, one person died of COVID in the vaccine group, and two people died of COVID in the placebo group. So Pfizer, with the misleading measure of relative risk reduction, called their vaccine “100% effective” because two is 100% greater than one. But from the angle of absolute risk, it took 22,000 vaccines to save just one life from COVID.
• And over a 6-month period, 21 of the vaccinated people died of all causes, whereas only 17 people died in the placebo group, a 24% difference.
So what was killing those people in the vaccine group?
“It was cardiac arrest,” attested
@RobertKennedyJr
.
“There were five cardiac arrest deaths in the vaccine group and only one in the placebo group. What that means is that if you take that vaccine, you’re [five times] more likely to die from a fatal cardiac arrest over the next six months than if you don’t. What it also means is that for every life they save by preventing a death from COVID, they are killing four people from cardiac arrest.”
Lee:
Unless you include a link to the study, please don’t post that sort of thing here because there is no way to evaluate what he’s saying without a link to the study. Just to take an example: was the difference statistically significant? That’s a small number in both groups, if the groups were very large – which they were. Also, how well were the groups matched for prior conditions, age, that sort of thing? Groups can be different in those regards and others, and if so one would expect different death and disease rates post-vaccination.
Include a link to the study or the remarks of RFK are worthless or worse than worthless.
Lee returns. Lee discovers that the Covid19 vaccine does not prevent death from all causes.
Where would we be without Lee?
I shared Act I last weekend. A couple of people expressed interest in Act II.
By year’s end, further program expansion brought me to dayshift. We were preparing for classified missions and needed to construct a TEMPEST facility for the DEC-10s. By this time, we had a third DEC-10 and two of them were going into the new facility. I was tasked with developing all the facility requirements, floor plan, power, air-conditioning and all the procedures for declassifying the system. Here I ran into a problem. We had paid DEC engineers to write the core memory declassification routines. Core memory is non-volatile and specially approved programs had to be run to declassify it. They had to run on bare metal with no OS. DEC had missed the program for the communications PDP-11/40. This was my first “kill the messenger” experience. I learned that in this business you were expected to bring the solution along with the problem. I ended up reading the manual on the PDP-11/40 and writing it myself. I knew nothing about PDP assembly language and I didn’t have a Macro-11 assembler anyway, so I wrote it in machine code. I keyed that program in through the front panel in octal, old style, the first time I ran it. Then I hand converted it into Macro-11. I felt like I could do anything after that. I was extremely pleased with myself when the time came to tell management what I had done and submit that program to the DoD for their approval.
The new facility was north of the SIL and the engineering teams were moved to a new building much farther south than the SIL. It was now more than ½ mile to the engineering offices so we put a remote printer in their new building. This meant that the chance of running into Flying By by happenstance was about the same as zero.
Over the course of the next several months I solved several technical problems and gained the reputation as a problem solver. First, the contractor on-site who supported the JOVIAL cross-compiler for the spacecraft was having trouble getting a problem fixed by the home office. He was directed to me by Flying By’s brother which I thought was interesting since I had only spoken to her brother once. When he had been introduced to me, I said “So Flying By is your sister, huh?”
The contractor rep didn’t have access to the compiler sources which was ok since it was written in JOVIAL which I didn’t know. But I did know the DEC-10 instructions very well and I was able to find the problem in the executable and patch it. Gold Star #2.
Then I got another compiler problem. The first Air Force liaison officer on the program had written some accounting programs in SAIL. SAIL stood for Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language. SAIL was much easier to use to handle text than JOVIAL or FORTRAN so several program utilities had been written using it. Specifically, the cross-reference utility for the spacecraft flight software. That made the SAIL compiler a contract deliverable. The DEC-10 Model 1091 with the KL10E processor was a micro-coded computer. DEC had decided to add VAX/11 compatible floating-point instructions to the system and to make room in the micro-store they had decided to remove obsolete KA10 floating-point instructions. SAIL required KA10 floating-point. This was another “kill the messenger” experience. It was a brutal public dressing down that was all but a crucifixion. Like it was my personal fault or something. Very unpleasant. Then began the hunt for the SAIL compiler sources.
The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory had turned them over to the National Institute of Health. Why I have no idea. My contact was gone and nobody else at NIH knew what I was talking about. A trail of crumbs to the University of Rochester, Rutgers University and Eastman Kodak eventually led me back to the person at NIH who had the SAIL sources. But they wouldn’t let me have them. So, I told them it was a matter of national security. They grudgingly gave me the sources on the condition that I share them with no one. The SAIL compiler was written in SAIL which I happened to know and done deal. Gold Star #3
Next, we installed encrypted datalinks between our site and Martin Marietta in Denver and Air Force Space Division in Sunnyvale. The equipment was NSA supplied and the design was done by Air Force experts at Rome AFB, NY. The equipment was installed by Air Force techs from McChord AFB. They spent days trying to get those crypto boxes and data links to work. No go. Finally, I found out I had a high enough clearance to read the crypto box maintenance manuals. Lucky for me, I figured out what was wrong with the configuration and got it all working. (Pro tip: If at first you don’t succeed, RTFM) Gold Star #4
I was now intellectually prepared for my next encounter with Flying By.
One day, about a year and a half or so after I saw her, Flying By called me for technical help. This was only the second time I ever spoke to her. I was excited. Flying By needed my help. Before, I was a nobody barely fit to hand Flying By her printouts. In fact, I was not even able to accomplish that. Now I was a somebody and had expertise that she needed. Flying By’s telemetry analysis package had exceeded the virtual address size of the system. She had decided to use memory overlays. Flying By was a real and very experienced computer scientist and she had used overlays before on other systems. She knew what she was doing. And. It. Was. Not. Working!
When she arrived at my office, I wasn’t sure I recognize her at first (after all, 3 seconds 18 months earlier was not much to go by and she had changed her appearance quite a bit). She was directed to my desk and as she walked over, I happened to glance at her badge. I noticed her (real) name was spelled wrong on her badge. I didn’t have the same reaction as I did previously and this disappointed me for some reason.
I worked with her for a few hours and figured out there was a defect in the DEC-10 memory management system, not in her configuration. I came up with a fix but Flying By didn’t agree that I had found the error or the fix. The system was under space program change control which meant change board review to even test my fix. Flying By thought that I was wasting time and I was wrong. I wasn’t.
Flying By: “I knew his name and I knew his father. I even knew the taste of his mother’s dinner rolls that were famous on IUS, but I didn’t know who he was. My first reaction to seeing him was ‘My, how young he is. And easy on the eyes. But young.’ I was impressed with how he broke down my problem and determined its root cause. I was intensely attracted to Chases Eagles while working on that overlay problem. I did something that I had never done before and asked one of his co-workers what his availability was. I was disappointed to find out that he had a girlfriend. I was very sad when that week was over. After that, I pretty much avoided him. I didn’t want to be reminded of him.”
I should mention here that she knew my father because he was a lead engineer on the program and ran the team that planned the actual flights. I didn’t know he knew her and it never occurred to me to ask him if he did. Several months before I ever saw her or even knew of her existence, she had first eaten my mother’s truly spectacular rolls at the Christmas potluck.
The engineer’s office bays were crammed with rows of desks in groups of three to five. The desks all butted together. You would have a group of desks, an aisle, more desks, an aisle and so forth. The rows were so close together that the middle desks occupants would have to have the person on the left or right move their chair to get in or out. So, you sat very close to the people around you. I found out later, Flying By at one time sat in the desk in front of my father. Those months when I was hoping to just see her a second time for more than three seconds and never did, my father saw her every day just five or six feet away. I had no clue.
My girlfriend and I went our separate ways and over the next ten or twelve months or so, as we were getting closer to first flight, I worked several technical, procedural or policy issues for Flying By. Her telemetry analysis package was to be used by all the different engineering groups to examine the data of interest to them. We had to work through procedures for receiving, marking, copying, and storing the telemetry tapes and procedures for making disk copies and access and so forth. But I never really worked directly with her, but always through a third party, another programmer or management. I got the feeling that she didn’t like me and was avoiding me. I assumed that I had offended her in some way that week we worked together.
At the same time, we were doing classified mission planning several nights each week. The systems were supposed be out of classified and reconnected to the network by midnight but we were always very late due to long running batch jobs. Flying By was getting frustrated by this when she was still working in the middle of the night and we couldn’t even give her an estimate when the system would be available. Her unhappiness in this regard caused me to not like her very much because it was not fair and not my fault. Plus, she had hurt my feelings by avoiding me.
It was during this time that her brother was dating our classified custodian (the person responsible for all our classified material). That meant I saw him from time to time in my office area but never his ghost sister.
I saw her once around this time at an all-hands security briefing. A briefing where several hundred people were told things like “when the orbiter has a classified payload onboard, its location is classified even if it is sitting out on Pad 39A in plain sight”. On that occasion I saw her from across the room. The person I was with, Betty, pointed her out to me and said “There is Flying By”. As I sat there, I wondered first, why she was in the wrong briefing group alphabetically and secondly, what the heck I had done to cause her to not like me.
[End Act II]
Open Thread Sunday. Russo Ukraine war:
The Ukraine Air War Moves to Russia – Drone attacks, F-16s & Changing tactics – Perun
Timestamps:
00:00:00 — The Air War In Ukraine
00:01:21 — What Am I Talking About
00:03:09 — Background & Objectives
00:04:36 — Sabotage And Special Operations
00:17:26 — Long Range Strikes: Russia
00:33:55 — Long Range Strikes: Ukraine
00:40:34 — Ukraine In The Air – F16, ALCMS & Attrition
00:57:25 — Battlefield Aviation
01:07:32 — What Next?
01:09:35 — Conclusion
01:11:02 — Channel Update
RE: UFOs
Within our galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, there are between 100 to 400 BILLION stars AND at least that number of planets.
Oh, and by the way, it is estimated that there are 100 to 400 BILLION galaxies.
I do not understand why anybody believes that intelligent life exists only on planet earth and nowhere else.
I do not understand why “intellectuals” have to invent crazy theories to explain why/ what are UFOs.
(OK, I take that back; the MO of intellectuals is to always demonstrate they are superior to mere mortals and thus confirm to fellow intellectuals that they should still be invited to their cocktail parties).
Military and commercial pilots have been seeing bizarre flying objects since at least WWII and ground based civilians – including yours truly – have seen stuff flying about that is beyond the capability of any military or civilian flying machines.
Chases Eagles,
Re Act II: Fascinating, thank you! Looking forward to Act III!
John Tyler–
RE: UFOs—the battle within
As I have written here before, from what I have read and heard, it appears that since the beginning of the modern era of UFO sightings– beginning in WWII–there has been an ongoing battle by factions within our government over how much—if any—of what our government has learned about UFOs should be disclosed to the general public.
With only a few rare exceptions the non-disclosure faction has always won the argument, and as part of these non-disclosure efforts this faction has also apparently been running an 80 year long disinformation campaign; one designed to make UFOs the subject of general and widespread derision, and to discourage and/or to intimidate or discredit anyone who might come forward with any inside information.
The recent government events over the last few years are signs of this battle.
In late December of 2017 the New York Times broke the story about the existence of AATIP, the DOD’s secret UFO research program, and it’s head Lou Elizondo.
Back then, Intelligence operative Lou Elizondo resigned from the government, and went public, saying that did so because he was very alarmed about what he had found out about UFOs, but was blocked from getting that vital information to the Secretary of Defense by his superiors in the office of the DOD Undersecretary for Intelligence & Security, headed by Ronald Moultrie, and Elizondo filed an official compliant about retaliation.
So, Elizondo, after very publicly resigning, and for several years thereafter, made every effort he could to raise the visibility of this issue, to spread the word.
The first UFO hearing in 50 or so years in May of 2022 was a clown show, featuring two very senior government officials–one of them that same Undersecretary of Defense Ronald Moultrie—both of whom showed up with a dismissive attitude, and proceeded to display an almost total ignorance of the subject and it’s history, illustrating things with two very crappy videos.
Then, on April 19th, 2023 the head of the new, Congressionally mandated UFO investigative office, ARRO, Dr. Shaun Kirkpatrick, assured Congress that he had yet to see any “credible evidence” that UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin. (ARRO reportedly with only a couple of people on staff, and without the resources to do the job it was mandated to do.)
A few months ago, along comes Intelligence Community whistleblower David Grush, and in first his NewsNation TV interview, and then his very explosive testimony–under oath—on July 26, 2023 before the House Oversight Committee, he testified about a secret, deeply buried UFO crash retrieval and reverse engineering program, and alien bodies, details of which he offered to reveal to members of Congress in a secure setting i.e. in a SCIF.
Grusch had also filed a whistleblower complaint with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community alleging retaliation, which the IG found to be goth “credible” and”urgent.”
Are we starting to see a pattern here?
But curiously, according to reports, the DOD has placed obstacles in the way of Grush giving detailed secret testimony , and had refused to provide Congress with a SCIF where Grusch could reveal to members of Congress all of the classified information he has gathered on this issue.
(Personal calls I have made to a couple of relevant Congressional offices have produced directly contradictory information—“there are multiple SCIFs all over Capitol Hill,” or “there are no SCIFS on Capitol Hill”).
Interestingly and very confusingly Grusch has been cleared by the DOD’s Office of Prepublication and Security Review to say what he has said but, at the same time, this office refused to allow him to also provide either the images or the documents necessary to back up his claims.
Then, a few weeks after Grusch’s testimony came a story–a hit piece–that after a combat tour in Afghanistan he suffered from PTSD, and had a suicidal episode resulting in brief hospitalization.
How did anyone get around the protections of HIPPA to get information on this incident?
Well, the reporter who broke this story admitted that his contacts in DOD pointed him towards police records, which recorded Grusch’s transfer to the hospital.
No mention, though, that after reviewing this incident Grusch retained his security clearances.
Recently Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett, who was one of those who pushed for the House Oversight Committee UFO Hearing, when asked if they were planning any more UFO hearings, said that his understanding was that, despite the tremendous public interest this hearing generated, lobbyists for the DOD and Intelligence community were exerting tremendous pressure on members of Congress to shut down their inquiries, and to not hold any more hearings, and that, from what he understood, Congressional leaders were against any more hearings.
Similarly, although Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand and other Senators had introduced an extensive, bi-partisan, strong, and very detailed UFO amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which had passed the Senate, Congressman Burchett said he very much doubted that it would end up becoming law.
Just a couple of days ago came the DOD announcement that AARO will no longer be reporting to Undersecretary Ronald Moultrie’s Office of Intelligence and Security but, instead, will be reporting to Kathleen Hicks, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, second in command of DOD.
That same announcement also said that the database of unclassified UFO reports and a place for government employees to report UFO sightings, which ARRO was supposed to have setup, was now online.
All the above, I believe, the signs on the surface of the battle deep within.
I do not understand why anybody believes that intelligent life exists only on planet earth and nowhere else.
John Tyler:
Who are you talking about?
I’m sure such people exist, but generally speaking the opposition to believing UFOs are Real Aliens in Real Spaceships is the lack of conclusive proof.
Sure there are tons of sightings of some things moving about in the sky — you have seen something and I have seen something — but that doesn’t necessarily extrapolate to alien life visiting from other planets.
Maybe that proof is forthcoming. Maybe it’s locked up in some ultra-secret government installation.
But we aren’t there yet. Those who aren’t convinced aren’t foolish.
There are those who argue that it is *possible* we are the only intelligent life in our galaxy.
Despite Carl Sagan’s catchphrase about “billions and billions” of stars, galaxies, whatevers, we have yet to detect direct evidence of such life. That’s what the Fermi Paradox is all about.
Maybe with improved instrumentation we will detect extra-terrestrial intelligence. Maybe they will finally land on the White House lawn and say, “Take us to your leader.”
But for now we are stuck with only one known intelligence, us, and it’s foolish to extrapolate from a sample of one.
Somebody has to be first. Maybe it is us.
I do not understand why anybody believes that intelligent life exists only on planet earth and nowhere else.
I don’t believe that, nor do I believe that intelligent life exists outside of Earth. I don’t know if it does, but I have seen no concrete evidence of it. To me, UFOs can be explained as supernatural spiritual phenomena, probably demonic.
I believe in God, who created the universe. His ways are not our ways, and we can’t understand them very well at all.
The Western establishment (minus Viktor Orbán) seems to think there’s little risk with Ukraine brinksmanship – perhaps because losing would mean the end of everything (and they frankly don’t care).
Whatever the calculation, it’s badly flawed – practically a suicidal death wish. While Western elites aim for a meaningless “Putin started it” epitaph, Putin (with a twinkle in his eye) looks forward to the horror of corrupt Western elites as they get their nuclear suppositories. That end might not be close at hand, but it’s visible beyond thresholds and triggers we’ve been warned about.
Go ahead, make his day.
Banned Lizard, You aren’t alone in that glimpse of the future.
Labor Day ~ Then… To honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States.
John Tyler and Huxley–the most recent estimate for the number of galaxies in the Universe is ten times higher than the old one of 100-400 million, the new estimate is 1 to 2 Trillion galaxies in the Universe.*
This makes the chances for other intelligent life to have evolved in the Universe even higher, as do some new estimates for the age of the universe, putting it not at 13 plus billion years, but around something like 26.7 billion years old.**
P.S.–I expect as we learn more these estimates may go even higher.
P.S. As I understand it, the data/images astronomers are getting from the new James Webb telescope is even starting to throw doubt on the big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe. *
P.P.S–Make that old estimate of number of galaxies in the Universe at 100-400 Billion now at 1-2 Trillion.
So, with this enormous number of environments and situations for life to evolve and this enormous amount of time for these “experiments” to take place, it seems to me that there is enough room and time for intelligent life to have evolved an enormous number of times, and for a myriad of civilizations to have risen and fallen.
My understanding is that, so far, the Big Bang is safe. But theories about lots of things that happened not all that long afterwards, especially how galaxies came to be, seem to have been upended for the moment.
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RE: UFOs—a different view
French scientist, inventor, and investor Jacques Vallee has been investigating the UFO phenomenon for perhaps five or six decades now, has traveled all over the world in his quest for knowledge, and has written several books on the UFO phenomenon.
His most recent book, “Trinity: The Best Kept Secret” is a very detailed investigation of a UFO crash which happened in 1945, two years before Roswell, and only some twenty days after and twenty miles away from the site of the detonation of the first atomic bomb.
Vallee is a very educated man and an unusually perceptive and complex thinker, and his view is that the “extraterrestrial hypothesis” is far too simple a one to encompass and explain the complex UFO phenomenon; a UFO phenomenon which is full of “absurdity,” and Vallee believes that this absurdity is in fact a control mechanism, one designed to “create a mythology,” to push people to think in new directions.*
* See https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/166wypu/has_anyone_seen_anything_from_dr_jacques_vallee/
P.S.–As I understand it, Vallee believes that the intelligence behind the UFO phenomenon is the same intelligence which has been with the human race for a very long time, appearing in different guise, wearing a different mask, depending on the particular stage of human development i.e. an elemental spirit, a god or goddess, a thing of folklore, etc.–see his thesis laid out in his book “Passport to Magonia.”
P.P.S.–If you are interested in his book “Trinity,” note that there is now a revised and expanded version available.
It’s interesting that while blaming the problem on funding he doesn’t address the failure to maintain order or standards.
of course not, why would that matter,
https://twitter.com/hahussain/status/1697952199211429906
Another open-thread comment about something I read.
I don’t think I’ve ever recommended something without reservation. This article is that single exception: “The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge.”
link: https://tylervigen.com/the-mystery-of-the-bloomfield-bridge
Great video. Much to think about. Architectural history takes in a lot more than bricks and mortar. Graphic reminder of how bad tenement living was. And even better-off people didn’t have much in the way of stuff, whereas many of us today are drowning in it. I was also pleased to find out the the distinguished brownstones that Theodore Roosevelt and the characters of Edith Wharton grew up in were the tract housing of the day.
neo:
More interesting than I was expecting, nonetheless it brings to mind this classic from 1976:
http://www.mappingthenation.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Rumsey-Steinberg-New-Yorker-1976.jpg
What can’t UFO’s explain or be responsible for?
One can pour anything into them and extract everything from them, except for things that aren’t speculation speculation.
Indeed, one claim is that UFOs can have a larger internal volume than is possible based on the speculated exterior dimensions, speculated, since, of course, there are no recorded dimensions of the exterior or interior of any UFO.
But you know that there are many types of UFOs and many species of alien intelligences, aka, little green “men.”
Someone else’s problem.
Re: Railroad apartments
In New Orleans we called them shotgun apartments because … well, you figure it out.
We have shotgun houses around here. Small single homes with a hall running from front to back and rooms opening on one side. In fact, not far from here is a very attractive little subdivision of shotgun houses with parking spaces behind and a community swimming pool.
If:
1) Trump + Biden become the candidates for the 2024 election,
and
2) Trump doesn’t debate Biden before the election-
is there a [very, good chance] that Trump will win the Presidential election, in 2024?
TR (4:45 pm) asks,
“is there a [very, good chance] that Trump will win the Presidential election, in 2024?”
There is (in my rarely humble opinion) *no* chance that Trump is (re-)inaugurated president in January 2025. There is no chance that Trump “wins” the 2024 presidential election, whatever in the world that may mean these days.
The Republican Party is not, as far as I can tell*, at all prepared for the vicious lawfare that would/will certainly accompany the 2024 balloting if there is any sign that Trump might actually be competitive — and even if they somehow become prepared, they will not be inclined to go to bat for Trump.
* but I am *no* insider, so there’s that
As Abraxas noted in “How could I have forgotten”:
RIP Jimmy Buffett
He was more of cult act, but still wonderful in my book. His Parrothead following hasn’t reached Deadhead proportions, but is respectable. In spite of his beach bum/drug smuggler image he amassed an entrepreneurial fortune of around $1`bil.
His music is plain old-fashioned fun, though not without (mildly) moral teachings. Take a close listen to “Margaritaville” sometime and notice the narrator’s arc from “it’s nobody’s fault” to “it’s my own damn fault.”
_______________________________________
Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
But I know it’s my own damn fault
–Jimmy Buffett, “Margaritaville”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDqjRGqpIU
Then there’s Buffett’s awesome popup appearance in the legendary music video:
______________________________________
What would Jimmy Buffett do?
–Alan Jackson, Jimmy Buffett – It’s Five O’ Clock Somewhere (Official HD Video)”‘
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPCjC543llU
The video of the most dangerous Democrat in the US of A:
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1698081641296437328
The Vigilant Fox ?
@VigilantFox
What the Media & Big Pharma Won’t Tell You About the Pfizer Clinical Trials, as Explained by RFK Jr.
“For every life they save by preventing a death from COVID, they are killing four people from cardiac arrest.”
• In the Pfizer clinical trials, they gave 22,000 people two COVID injections and 22,000 people fake vaccines.
• Of the 44,000 in total, one person died of COVID in the vaccine group, and two people died of COVID in the placebo group. So Pfizer, with the misleading measure of relative risk reduction, called their vaccine “100% effective” because two is 100% greater than one. But from the angle of absolute risk, it took 22,000 vaccines to save just one life from COVID.
• And over a 6-month period, 21 of the vaccinated people died of all causes, whereas only 17 people died in the placebo group, a 24% difference.
So what was killing those people in the vaccine group?
“It was cardiac arrest,” attested
@RobertKennedyJr
.
“There were five cardiac arrest deaths in the vaccine group and only one in the placebo group. What that means is that if you take that vaccine, you’re [five times] more likely to die from a fatal cardiac arrest over the next six months than if you don’t. What it also means is that for every life they save by preventing a death from COVID, they are killing four people from cardiac arrest.”
Lee:
Unless you include a link to the study, please don’t post that sort of thing here because there is no way to evaluate what he’s saying without a link to the study. Just to take an example: was the difference statistically significant? That’s a small number in both groups, if the groups were very large – which they were. Also, how well were the groups matched for prior conditions, age, that sort of thing? Groups can be different in those regards and others, and if so one would expect different death and disease rates post-vaccination.
Include a link to the study or the remarks of RFK are worthless or worse than worthless.
Lee returns. Lee discovers that the Covid19 vaccine does not prevent death from all causes.
Where would we be without Lee?
I shared Act I last weekend. A couple of people expressed interest in Act II.
Act II “Hyper Gamma Spaces” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs3JN-LwPxg
My Second Encounter with Flying By
By year’s end, further program expansion brought me to dayshift. We were preparing for classified missions and needed to construct a TEMPEST facility for the DEC-10s. By this time, we had a third DEC-10 and two of them were going into the new facility. I was tasked with developing all the facility requirements, floor plan, power, air-conditioning and all the procedures for declassifying the system. Here I ran into a problem. We had paid DEC engineers to write the core memory declassification routines. Core memory is non-volatile and specially approved programs had to be run to declassify it. They had to run on bare metal with no OS. DEC had missed the program for the communications PDP-11/40. This was my first “kill the messenger” experience. I learned that in this business you were expected to bring the solution along with the problem. I ended up reading the manual on the PDP-11/40 and writing it myself. I knew nothing about PDP assembly language and I didn’t have a Macro-11 assembler anyway, so I wrote it in machine code. I keyed that program in through the front panel in octal, old style, the first time I ran it. Then I hand converted it into Macro-11. I felt like I could do anything after that. I was extremely pleased with myself when the time came to tell management what I had done and submit that program to the DoD for their approval.
The new facility was north of the SIL and the engineering teams were moved to a new building much farther south than the SIL. It was now more than ½ mile to the engineering offices so we put a remote printer in their new building. This meant that the chance of running into Flying By by happenstance was about the same as zero.
Over the course of the next several months I solved several technical problems and gained the reputation as a problem solver. First, the contractor on-site who supported the JOVIAL cross-compiler for the spacecraft was having trouble getting a problem fixed by the home office. He was directed to me by Flying By’s brother which I thought was interesting since I had only spoken to her brother once. When he had been introduced to me, I said “So Flying By is your sister, huh?”
The contractor rep didn’t have access to the compiler sources which was ok since it was written in JOVIAL which I didn’t know. But I did know the DEC-10 instructions very well and I was able to find the problem in the executable and patch it. Gold Star #2.
Then I got another compiler problem. The first Air Force liaison officer on the program had written some accounting programs in SAIL. SAIL stood for Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language. SAIL was much easier to use to handle text than JOVIAL or FORTRAN so several program utilities had been written using it. Specifically, the cross-reference utility for the spacecraft flight software. That made the SAIL compiler a contract deliverable. The DEC-10 Model 1091 with the KL10E processor was a micro-coded computer. DEC had decided to add VAX/11 compatible floating-point instructions to the system and to make room in the micro-store they had decided to remove obsolete KA10 floating-point instructions. SAIL required KA10 floating-point. This was another “kill the messenger” experience. It was a brutal public dressing down that was all but a crucifixion. Like it was my personal fault or something. Very unpleasant. Then began the hunt for the SAIL compiler sources.
The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory had turned them over to the National Institute of Health. Why I have no idea. My contact was gone and nobody else at NIH knew what I was talking about. A trail of crumbs to the University of Rochester, Rutgers University and Eastman Kodak eventually led me back to the person at NIH who had the SAIL sources. But they wouldn’t let me have them. So, I told them it was a matter of national security. They grudgingly gave me the sources on the condition that I share them with no one. The SAIL compiler was written in SAIL which I happened to know and done deal. Gold Star #3
Next, we installed encrypted datalinks between our site and Martin Marietta in Denver and Air Force Space Division in Sunnyvale. The equipment was NSA supplied and the design was done by Air Force experts at Rome AFB, NY. The equipment was installed by Air Force techs from McChord AFB. They spent days trying to get those crypto boxes and data links to work. No go. Finally, I found out I had a high enough clearance to read the crypto box maintenance manuals. Lucky for me, I figured out what was wrong with the configuration and got it all working. (Pro tip: If at first you don’t succeed, RTFM) Gold Star #4
I was now intellectually prepared for my next encounter with Flying By.
One day, about a year and a half or so after I saw her, Flying By called me for technical help. This was only the second time I ever spoke to her. I was excited. Flying By needed my help. Before, I was a nobody barely fit to hand Flying By her printouts. In fact, I was not even able to accomplish that. Now I was a somebody and had expertise that she needed. Flying By’s telemetry analysis package had exceeded the virtual address size of the system. She had decided to use memory overlays. Flying By was a real and very experienced computer scientist and she had used overlays before on other systems. She knew what she was doing. And. It. Was. Not. Working!
When she arrived at my office, I wasn’t sure I recognize her at first (after all, 3 seconds 18 months earlier was not much to go by and she had changed her appearance quite a bit). She was directed to my desk and as she walked over, I happened to glance at her badge. I noticed her (real) name was spelled wrong on her badge. I didn’t have the same reaction as I did previously and this disappointed me for some reason.
I worked with her for a few hours and figured out there was a defect in the DEC-10 memory management system, not in her configuration. I came up with a fix but Flying By didn’t agree that I had found the error or the fix. The system was under space program change control which meant change board review to even test my fix. Flying By thought that I was wasting time and I was wrong. I wasn’t.
I should mention here that she knew my father because he was a lead engineer on the program and ran the team that planned the actual flights. I didn’t know he knew her and it never occurred to me to ask him if he did. Several months before I ever saw her or even knew of her existence, she had first eaten my mother’s truly spectacular rolls at the Christmas potluck.
The engineer’s office bays were crammed with rows of desks in groups of three to five. The desks all butted together. You would have a group of desks, an aisle, more desks, an aisle and so forth. The rows were so close together that the middle desks occupants would have to have the person on the left or right move their chair to get in or out. So, you sat very close to the people around you. I found out later, Flying By at one time sat in the desk in front of my father. Those months when I was hoping to just see her a second time for more than three seconds and never did, my father saw her every day just five or six feet away. I had no clue.
My girlfriend and I went our separate ways and over the next ten or twelve months or so, as we were getting closer to first flight, I worked several technical, procedural or policy issues for Flying By. Her telemetry analysis package was to be used by all the different engineering groups to examine the data of interest to them. We had to work through procedures for receiving, marking, copying, and storing the telemetry tapes and procedures for making disk copies and access and so forth. But I never really worked directly with her, but always through a third party, another programmer or management. I got the feeling that she didn’t like me and was avoiding me. I assumed that I had offended her in some way that week we worked together.
At the same time, we were doing classified mission planning several nights each week. The systems were supposed be out of classified and reconnected to the network by midnight but we were always very late due to long running batch jobs. Flying By was getting frustrated by this when she was still working in the middle of the night and we couldn’t even give her an estimate when the system would be available. Her unhappiness in this regard caused me to not like her very much because it was not fair and not my fault. Plus, she had hurt my feelings by avoiding me.
It was during this time that her brother was dating our classified custodian (the person responsible for all our classified material). That meant I saw him from time to time in my office area but never his ghost sister.
I saw her once around this time at an all-hands security briefing. A briefing where several hundred people were told things like “when the orbiter has a classified payload onboard, its location is classified even if it is sitting out on Pad 39A in plain sight”. On that occasion I saw her from across the room. The person I was with, Betty, pointed her out to me and said “There is Flying By”. As I sat there, I wondered first, why she was in the wrong briefing group alphabetically and secondly, what the heck I had done to cause her to not like me.
[End Act II]
Open Thread Sunday. Russo Ukraine war:
The Ukraine Air War Moves to Russia – Drone attacks, F-16s & Changing tactics – Perun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqcHX9Hqvrs
RE: UFOs
Within our galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, there are between 100 to 400 BILLION stars AND at least that number of planets.
Oh, and by the way, it is estimated that there are 100 to 400 BILLION galaxies.
I do not understand why anybody believes that intelligent life exists only on planet earth and nowhere else.
I do not understand why “intellectuals” have to invent crazy theories to explain why/ what are UFOs.
(OK, I take that back; the MO of intellectuals is to always demonstrate they are superior to mere mortals and thus confirm to fellow intellectuals that they should still be invited to their cocktail parties).
Military and commercial pilots have been seeing bizarre flying objects since at least WWII and ground based civilians – including yours truly – have seen stuff flying about that is beyond the capability of any military or civilian flying machines.
Chases Eagles,
Re Act II: Fascinating, thank you! Looking forward to Act III!
John Tyler–
RE: UFOs—the battle within
As I have written here before, from what I have read and heard, it appears that since the beginning of the modern era of UFO sightings– beginning in WWII–there has been an ongoing battle by factions within our government over how much—if any—of what our government has learned about UFOs should be disclosed to the general public.
With only a few rare exceptions the non-disclosure faction has always won the argument, and as part of these non-disclosure efforts this faction has also apparently been running an 80 year long disinformation campaign; one designed to make UFOs the subject of general and widespread derision, and to discourage and/or to intimidate or discredit anyone who might come forward with any inside information.
The recent government events over the last few years are signs of this battle.
In late December of 2017 the New York Times broke the story about the existence of AATIP, the DOD’s secret UFO research program, and it’s head Lou Elizondo.
Back then, Intelligence operative Lou Elizondo resigned from the government, and went public, saying that did so because he was very alarmed about what he had found out about UFOs, but was blocked from getting that vital information to the Secretary of Defense by his superiors in the office of the DOD Undersecretary for Intelligence & Security, headed by Ronald Moultrie, and Elizondo filed an official compliant about retaliation.
So, Elizondo, after very publicly resigning, and for several years thereafter, made every effort he could to raise the visibility of this issue, to spread the word.
The first UFO hearing in 50 or so years in May of 2022 was a clown show, featuring two very senior government officials–one of them that same Undersecretary of Defense Ronald Moultrie—both of whom showed up with a dismissive attitude, and proceeded to display an almost total ignorance of the subject and it’s history, illustrating things with two very crappy videos.
Then, on April 19th, 2023 the head of the new, Congressionally mandated UFO investigative office, ARRO, Dr. Shaun Kirkpatrick, assured Congress that he had yet to see any “credible evidence” that UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin. (ARRO reportedly with only a couple of people on staff, and without the resources to do the job it was mandated to do.)
A few months ago, along comes Intelligence Community whistleblower David Grush, and in first his NewsNation TV interview, and then his very explosive testimony–under oath—on July 26, 2023 before the House Oversight Committee, he testified about a secret, deeply buried UFO crash retrieval and reverse engineering program, and alien bodies, details of which he offered to reveal to members of Congress in a secure setting i.e. in a SCIF.
Grusch had also filed a whistleblower complaint with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community alleging retaliation, which the IG found to be goth “credible” and”urgent.”
Are we starting to see a pattern here?
But curiously, according to reports, the DOD has placed obstacles in the way of Grush giving detailed secret testimony , and had refused to provide Congress with a SCIF where Grusch could reveal to members of Congress all of the classified information he has gathered on this issue.
(Personal calls I have made to a couple of relevant Congressional offices have produced directly contradictory information—“there are multiple SCIFs all over Capitol Hill,” or “there are no SCIFS on Capitol Hill”).
Interestingly and very confusingly Grusch has been cleared by the DOD’s Office of Prepublication and Security Review to say what he has said but, at the same time, this office refused to allow him to also provide either the images or the documents necessary to back up his claims.
Then, a few weeks after Grusch’s testimony came a story–a hit piece–that after a combat tour in Afghanistan he suffered from PTSD, and had a suicidal episode resulting in brief hospitalization.
How did anyone get around the protections of HIPPA to get information on this incident?
Well, the reporter who broke this story admitted that his contacts in DOD pointed him towards police records, which recorded Grusch’s transfer to the hospital.
No mention, though, that after reviewing this incident Grusch retained his security clearances.
Recently Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett, who was one of those who pushed for the House Oversight Committee UFO Hearing, when asked if they were planning any more UFO hearings, said that his understanding was that, despite the tremendous public interest this hearing generated, lobbyists for the DOD and Intelligence community were exerting tremendous pressure on members of Congress to shut down their inquiries, and to not hold any more hearings, and that, from what he understood, Congressional leaders were against any more hearings.
Similarly, although Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand and other Senators had introduced an extensive, bi-partisan, strong, and very detailed UFO amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which had passed the Senate, Congressman Burchett said he very much doubted that it would end up becoming law.
Just a couple of days ago came the DOD announcement that AARO will no longer be reporting to Undersecretary Ronald Moultrie’s Office of Intelligence and Security but, instead, will be reporting to Kathleen Hicks, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, second in command of DOD.
That same announcement also said that the database of unclassified UFO reports and a place for government employees to report UFO sightings, which ARRO was supposed to have setup, was now online.
All the above, I believe, the signs on the surface of the battle deep within.
I do not understand why anybody believes that intelligent life exists only on planet earth and nowhere else.
John Tyler:
Who are you talking about?
I’m sure such people exist, but generally speaking the opposition to believing UFOs are Real Aliens in Real Spaceships is the lack of conclusive proof.
Sure there are tons of sightings of some things moving about in the sky — you have seen something and I have seen something — but that doesn’t necessarily extrapolate to alien life visiting from other planets.
Maybe that proof is forthcoming. Maybe it’s locked up in some ultra-secret government installation.
But we aren’t there yet. Those who aren’t convinced aren’t foolish.
There are those who argue that it is *possible* we are the only intelligent life in our galaxy.
Despite Carl Sagan’s catchphrase about “billions and billions” of stars, galaxies, whatevers, we have yet to detect direct evidence of such life. That’s what the Fermi Paradox is all about.
Maybe with improved instrumentation we will detect extra-terrestrial intelligence. Maybe they will finally land on the White House lawn and say, “Take us to your leader.”
But for now we are stuck with only one known intelligence, us, and it’s foolish to extrapolate from a sample of one.
Somebody has to be first. Maybe it is us.
I do not understand why anybody believes that intelligent life exists only on planet earth and nowhere else.
I don’t believe that, nor do I believe that intelligent life exists outside of Earth. I don’t know if it does, but I have seen no concrete evidence of it. To me, UFOs can be explained as supernatural spiritual phenomena, probably demonic.
I believe in God, who created the universe. His ways are not our ways, and we can’t understand them very well at all.
Ukraine to Become an EU Member by End of Decade, Says Council President
It’s just EU membership, not NATO, right? I’m sure Vlad won’t mind.
Meanwhile,
Russia Deploys Intercontinental Ballistic Missile for ‘Combat Duty’
Hi, Vlad! Is that an ICBM, or are you just glad to see me?
The Western establishment (minus Viktor Orbán) seems to think there’s little risk with Ukraine brinksmanship – perhaps because losing would mean the end of everything (and they frankly don’t care).
Whatever the calculation, it’s badly flawed – practically a suicidal death wish. While Western elites aim for a meaningless “Putin started it” epitaph, Putin (with a twinkle in his eye) looks forward to the horror of corrupt Western elites as they get their nuclear suppositories. That end might not be close at hand, but it’s visible beyond thresholds and triggers we’ve been warned about.
Go ahead, make his day.
Banned Lizard, You aren’t alone in that glimpse of the future.
https://granitegrok.com/blog/2023/09/tucker-believes-the-biden-regimes-october-surprise-will-be-a-hot-war-with-a-russia
Labor Day ~ Then… To honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States.
And now… The De-Civilization of America | New video from Victor Davis Hanson ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7e34f22HXY&t=2s
John Tyler and Huxley–the most recent estimate for the number of galaxies in the Universe is ten times higher than the old one of 100-400 million, the new estimate is 1 to 2 Trillion galaxies in the Universe.*
This makes the chances for other intelligent life to have evolved in the Universe even higher, as do some new estimates for the age of the universe, putting it not at 13 plus billion years, but around something like 26.7 billion years old.**
P.S.–I expect as we learn more these estimates may go even higher.
* See https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cosmic-census-galaxies-updated-2-trillion
** See https://phys.org/news/2023-07-age-universe-billion-years-previously.html
P.S. As I understand it, the data/images astronomers are getting from the new James Webb telescope is even starting to throw doubt on the big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe. *
* SEE https://iai.tv/articles/the-big-bang-didnt-happen-auid-2215?_auid=2020
and see also https://phys.org/news/2023-04-james-webb-space-telescope-images.html
P.P.S–Make that old estimate of number of galaxies in the Universe at 100-400 Billion now at 1-2 Trillion.
So, with this enormous number of environments and situations for life to evolve and this enormous amount of time for these “experiments” to take place, it seems to me that there is enough room and time for intelligent life to have evolved an enormous number of times, and for a myriad of civilizations to have risen and fallen.
Snow on Pine and yet the fact remains
Dire Straits – So Far Away
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHXK9glwFBg
Snow on Pine:
My understanding is that, so far, the Big Bang is safe. But theories about lots of things that happened not all that long afterwards, especially how galaxies came to be, seem to have been upended for the moment.