The UFO Phenomenon

Atavachron wrote: I think we can safely say Mr. Hellyer is reporting what he believes, is not suffering from a major psychological condition, or is aeronautically uninformed;  he graduated from Curtiss-Wright Tech, became a pilot and later helped build aircraft for the RCAF.   Some of his later claims about aliens living among us and George Bush wanting to put weapons on the Moon are quite out there, but not much more than Stephen Hawking saying that if aliens exist they could be dangerous.

Yes, there's quite a large difference. The claims of certainty and specificness of his claims separate the two by a chasm. That he believes his claims or that he earned an engineering degree half a century ago changes nothing about the absurdness of his claims.

Atavachron wrote: I think we can safely say Mr. Hellyer is reporting what he believes, is not suffering from a major psychological condition, or is aeronautically uninformed;  he graduated from Curtiss-Wright Tech, became a pilot and later helped build aircraft for the RCAF.   Some of his later claims about aliens living among us and George Bush wanting to put weapons on the Moon are quite out there, but not much more than Stephen Hawking saying that if aliens exist they could be dangerous.

Equality 7-2521 wrote: The only thing interesting about that article is that someone would put that man in charge of the defense of an entire nation.

Why you think so? Did you think that the former Canadian Minister of Defence Mr Paul Hellyer is a lunatic who somehow managed to pass the tests for servicemen, or you say it because you think that Mr Paul Hellyer should not disclose classified military informations on RT?

The only thing interesting about that article is that someone would put that man in charge of the defense of an entire nation. 

I'll also take that post back if Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky counts as steampunk.

Dean's last handful of posts make it clear that it's impossible for me to tell parodies of steampunk from honest entries in the genre.

dr wu23 wrote: Our favorite Steampunker Dean..........

"...still no word from Babbage, the confounded interminable cunctations of transatlantic messaging are the bane of modern investigations. Perhaps we can hasten to dream that the aetheric waves discovered by Herr Hertz in the previous decade will one day herald a new era of instantaneous dialogue between peoples on differing continents, on this issue there is a faint whisper in the grapevine that an Italian engineer is conducting taciturn meetings with the General Post Office of Great Britian, that M. Holmes esquire is being extraordinarily closed-lipped on this matter is more than curious, but I digress. In the interim we have dispatched the Pinkerton agent to gather intelligence from the eye-witnesses, though I suspect this is an easier task on paper than in the cold light of reality."

Ah yes, steampunk! Never really my cup of tea, though, I quite like Verne himself but what little modern-day "steampunk" I'm familiar with does not excite me very much. Just tries way too hard, and its association with a goofy-as-hell subculture does not help.

In other ufoological news, this week marks the 40th anniversary of the Berwyn Mountain UFO crash, one of several British equivalents of Roswell. Had no idea it was anywhere as strange an event, or had connections to as much weird stuff, as the linked Nick Redfern article brings up though. That guy quite has the talent for being a lightning rod for the WTF-iest stories in modern ufoology.

Atavachron wrote: You steampunk, you.