Oregon UFO October Roundup

Well it seems that the jump in UFO activity here in Oregon subsided a bit during October. The search of the MUFON Sigthting Database reveals less the half of what was seen in September. Also I received zero reports personally this month. Yet while the activity seems to have died down, that doesn't mean there were not any interesting reports out there.

The first one of the month, which I posted about, apparently involved multiple eyewitnesses at a night club in Portland, Oregon. The object itself can probably be described as your classic triangular UFO and the one witness who did come forward made a computer animation what he saw (can be viewed here). Then there was another sighting that was posted to both MUFON, and The UFO Clearinghouse, which I found out about thanks to The Interstellar Housewife.

Finally there was an interesting incident which possibly involved several conventional (man made, possibly military) aircraft observing a hovering, unknown, square/multisided object, with multicolored lights . The total length of the sighting, according to Oregon MUFON, was about 30 minutes.

As with all UFO sightings, both myself and MUFON (especially the Oregon branch) would love to hear anything else from other witnesses to these sightings. Or if you saw one or see one not related to any those mentioned go ahead and mention those because every bit evidence counts in the UFO world.

A brief thought: Regarded as insects...

I can not recall how many times I've heard a scientist or skeptic on TV say something along the line of "A highly advanced alien race would probably regard humans as nothing, but insects. (sometimes cattle)" Likewise I can not tell you how much I disagree with that. Wait, I can!

Human history is riddled with "civilized" humans encountering other humans that we often consider "savage" or uncultured. For the most part we also disrespected many of these cultures by forcing our beliefs on them or enslaving them. And while today there are some groups and individuals who would still prefer to do the above, we have more regard for cultures that aren't part of the "modern world". In fact we are more curious about them then anything else, but at the same time hesitant to contact them for their good and ours. (Exposure to our diseases which isolated tribes have no immunity to can wipe them out. Some of these tribes aren't exactly the most friendly to outsiders either.)

I feel that an extra-terrestrial culture would probably react to us in one of the many ways mentioned above. If our history as a civilized species in full of it, an E.T. civilization would probably be as well, both the good and bad elements. That also means that they'd probably recognize us as being intelligent (at least to an extent) and would either try to communicate with us (for good or bad) or leave us alone for reasons they view as being good. However, until we have open and regular communication with an E.T. society, the best way to study how one would behave is to study ourselves.

Some related reading/examples:
Incredible pictures of one of Earth's last uncontacted tribes - Daily Mail Online
Article about the same tribe - BBC News
Wikipedia on slavery
Native American Timeline of Events

Is there an evolutionary advantage to telepathy?

While reading UFO Magazine today, one of the articles was talking about a book about this new agey guy who thinks that "star beings" are going to help us develop telepathy in order for us to move to a new spiritual level. In one sense, it's a cool idea, but then I tried to think about what the advantage would be to telepathy.

We humans prefer to think of ourselves as individuals, albeit social individuals and for the most part it works. Sure we can be selfish, but we value our privacy from time to time, and for the creative types that can be crucial. If we suddenly found ourselves with telepathy however, our minds would be open to anyone (or anything) close enough to us to hear thoughts. Unless there was a means to block people from reading our brains or we started thinking the same, I doubt we'd be able to walk down the street without hearing stuff we don't want to, or don't need to hear. Heck, there is enough of that without the telepathy.

From an evolutionary perspective, I see almost no reason for telepathy to develop. There are some situations where perhaps a species could develop something similar, such pack predators who rely on silence, but still need to communicate, but I feel it is unlikely that it would. Also like this article from Hard SF mentions, if a species already has other means of communication, the development of telepathy is doubtful and having multiple means of communication ourselves (vocal or visual) I find it unlikely we'd develop telepathy to replace any of them.

Overall I feel the idea is fantasy more then anything, at least for Earth based life. I will admit that it could develop elsewhere as a form of communication, maybe even in aliens who might be visiting our planet. And while I do feel that we as people need to evolve more spiritually or philosophically, I don't see how telepathy would help, in fact it would probably do more harm then good.

Common Sense: UFOs and God

The above title is probably a bit misleading, this isn't about UFOs and their connection to God...which who knows they might, but as I said, that's not what this post is about. It's really about two stupid things that no one seems to use common sense with. The first is that UFOs are "space aliens" and the second is that God can only exist with faith and would fail to exist if he was proven real...

Let's study the word UFO, which really isn't a word, but an abbreviation of the words "unidentified flying objects" which has absolutely nothing to do with aliens, unless of course a UFO can be identified as being an alien spaceship. The fact that they are unidentified makes them UFOs, not that they are aliens, weather balloons, or pan-dimensional rocket men. If we knew UFOs were any those, they'd in effect be IFOs, or identified flying objects and most of the time I think we can safely say they are not.

On the other side of it all though, I think we can safely say that a good number of these UFOs defy explanation. And although they are extraordinary and may not be conventional human aircraft, we shouldn't rush and conclude what they are because in all honesty most of us, excepting those who might have had contact with a UFO's occupants, will probably never be able to identify them.

As for God being destroyed by proving his existence, that's just completely nuts. Firstly, if God (assuming you believe in a creator or creators) relies totally on faith to exist, how would he have been able to create the world? No one would have been around then to have faith in him for him to exist, which would mean the whole Bible thing and as well as myths would not have formed and I'd probably not be sitting here typing this.

I'm only arguing this point simply because the whole idea that a couple scientists working with CERN (that place with the large hadron collider, or LHC) argued that the LHC was sabotaged by either people in the future or God in order to prevent them from forming the theorized God particle, which has something to do with the beginning of the universe.

Basically the two blokes said that people from the future may have prevented them from forming it because it would have caused a big disaster like a crazy black hole or something. Their other thought was that God wrecked it to prevent proof of his existence from forming because if he was proved real no one would have faith in him, but a proven belief in him, which they think means he'd "vanish in a puff logic" (paraphrased from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) or something, which is complete nonsense as I already stated above.

Hell and Birthdays

I find myself for some reason compelled to blog about Hell and religious stuff today, but I don't know why considering that I'm not totally religious and from what I can tell, the whole hellfire and brimstone thing we hear all the time is nothing, but bunk. Heck even the Jehovah's Witnesses agree on that one (I get literature from them at work and having a naturally inquisitive mind...well you get the picture) which means that I'm not the only one who sees that it's bunk, which is reassuring.

Actually the name Hell is a knock off of Hel from Norse mythology. That's right, Hell came from the Norse, although it wasn't the torturous flaming pit of doom. In actuality it was just a gloomy underworld where just about everyone goes when they die, unless of course you're one of the chosen who get to get plastered in Valhalla until Ragnarok. Probably the coolest part about the Norse Hel is that you can actually be born back out of it sometimes back into your family's bloodline, giving you another chance to chill in Valhalla the next time you die.

Another odd religious fact is that December 25th when everyone celebrates Christmas isn't really Jesus' birthday. A neat fact I learned while reading an issue of Atlantis Rising magazine awhile back is that Dec. 25th is originally the Roman celebration of the winter solstice which had something to do with Mithra, a mythical deity who apparently has a lot in common with Jesus. As far as the real birthday of Jesus, no one really knows, however it appears it was probably sometime in January.

Speaking of birthdays, come late May my family will have a new one to celebrate when my wife and I have our third child...meaning I'm one step closer to spreading my spawn across the globe. And other then that I really don't even know the point of this post...expect a better one tomorrow...lol

Where have these guys been?

There is a group calling themselves UFO response team, complete with converted cop cars that is supposedly based in CA, WA, Portland (OR), and Denver (CO) whose goal is to investigate UFO events. Now I must ask, where have these guys been during this apparent UFO wave here in Oregon and Washington? Are they truly investigating encounters or doing it to look cool? And finally why don't they have anything more other then an intro posted on their blog/site? I just hope there is more to them then looking rather MIBish in their converted Crown Victorias...personally I would have gone with something by Jeep.

Kudos to Phantoms and Monsters for posting info on these guys.

Update/thought (8:44pm): I wonder if these have anything to do with Robert Bigelow's attempt at forming MUFON rapid response teams?

Also, thanks to the Interstellar Housewife, I now know their actual webpage: UFOresponseteam.com

While at that site, I tried filling out their admissions thing. First page filled out fine and sent data, but the second had issues and wouldn't send right. They also ask a series of interesting questions...Going by how they've stylized their page, I want to say it's one of those alternate reality games promoting a movie, however I'm not to sure about that. Hopefully they send me a message from sending in the first page of their admissions thingy...

Triangular UFO seen in Portland

Well the first reported Oregon UFO sighting of October has been posted over at MUFON . Again this one reportedly contained multiple eyewitnesses (hopefully more come forward) and was of an apparent triangular object. Full account of sighting can be read here: Triangle UFO, three gray lights underneath moving west to east

Why are these not sprouting up everywhere?

Every once and awhile a great idea is had by someone, and thanks to a link over at Strange Planet I found one such idea. The idea is the dream of the late architect Nader Khalili to build not only natural homes, but ones that are cheap to construct and involve the very earth of the land the homes are built on. They are sort of an upgraded version of good old simple adobe housing (a method that has been used for thousands of years) called a monolithic dome, combining an ancient look with the sturdiness of dome architecture.

I think in our modern day world these are a perfect solution to many problems faced by not only the poor and those in third world countries, but also for those seeking to afford a home, but otherwise cannot do to the massive costs of standard houses. Part of the reason I think these are not popping up everywhere is the fact that people seem to think the disadvantages listed on this wikipedia page are a bigger problem then they really are. Well either that or the people who are in power both politically and in real estate are trying their hardest to keep these from spreading beyond just the eccentric and dreamers. Heck all the problems listed on that wikipedia page are easily overcome with a bit of experimentation, study, and implementation.

Just to show the awesome potential of these homes, here is a couple photo galleries showing what they can look like:
Picasa gallery of someone wishing to build a community using these homes
Cal-Earth gallery - gallery from the page of those trying to spread the skills needed to build these homes to the public.
Finally here is the actual home page Cal-Earth as well: Calearth.org

And before I go I must say this idea blows the dome home idea from Japan out of the water.