Alien?

Discussion in 'Pseudoscience Archive' started by Mr Anonymous, Mar 9, 2006.

  1. So what's all that got to do with Buffy then? It's principal themes were about everyday teenage/young adult life - the superficial trappings of the supernatural were only ever thinly veiled, and often terribly witty, metaphors for regular, day to day life. That's why BTVS as a show had such wide appeal and popularity - school kids could get it because they were in the sort of regular high school Buffy was set in and viewing such social ills for example of drink and drugs abuse being dealt with in terms of Vampires being a metaphor for people with drink and drugs related problems was approached in a way that didn't preach but in a funny kind of way told it like it is - adults got it equally because the same metaphors of demons and monsters personifying certain sociological issues from their own experience of the same rang true on a great number of levels.

    For example - A love struck Vampire Slayer in love with a Vampire with a soul acquiesces to teenage passion and sleeps with her paramour - the morning after she awakes to find him a soulless, swaggering asshole no longer interested in the her as a person, only a conquest - its a parody of real life few of the shows female audience failed to get instantly and it was on exactly these kind themes and levels Buffy The Vampire Slayer worked exclusively for its audience.

    Quite what the show had to do with the supernatural I have absolutely no idea - let alone you're interpretation of its popularity being evidence of some stand point the show in question had absolutely nothing at all to do with.

    So I'm remaining rather curious - what does BTVS have to do with some perceived sociologically evident dissatisfaction regarding the Free Market Economy?
     
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  3. duendy Registered Senior Member

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    so is your lack of understanding...really
     
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  5. duendy Registered Senior Member

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    Yes that was John Lilly. He also used a 'floatation tank' as set and setting. he has done some great research with Dolphins

    it is always frustraing--ish when smeone asks you for sources, and only a bit before you were reading exactly about it, but forget the site or your notes on it. it was all about what yo ask and included also world wide wewb innovators
    ctaully Lika it is PROFOUND rthe creative imnspiration the psychedelic era hashad on ideas. yes rhere are 'lists' of people, bt also understand that precisely because of te negative propagandathat ensued, many famous pople would obviously keep schtum about thier dilly dallyings wit psychedelics and their forthcoming insights.......
    howEVER i have found this
    'Stoned Scientists
    www.cannabisculture.com/articles/2783.html

    also, not sure if Francis Crick's mentioned there, but i know he--as co-creator of the 'discovery' of the Double_Helix was inspired with LSD

    also note that the very term 'geni-us' derives from psychedelic mythology. see, angels/genii are really metaphors FOR sacraments----For ancients, sacraments were sometimes seen as 'messengers'--ie., 'angels'
     
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  7. Giambattista sssssssssssssssssssssssss sssss Valued Senior Member

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    I am fully aware of that, but my intentions weren't apparent enough I guess. I wasn't actually giving support to one theory or another, just using examples. Let me try to explain what I was getting at...

    Multi-dimensional aliens came to my mind when I was writing that.

    Numerous persons have speculated that what are commonly called aliens as in "alien abduction" are very possibly extradimensional. These speculations are built on a variety of characteristics and abilities (and the high level of strangeness) exhibited by the beings and their crafts and associated phenomena.

    These ideas and conclusions are the core of some people's theories about the nature of the visitors. Others do not accept any transdimensional or spiritual natures, and tend to assume that these beings are physically solid.

    Some people discount the entire thing, saying that physical aliens are improbable and the notion of transdimensional entities is, generally speaking, an absurdity. The very weird aspects of some of the stranger ufo and alien encounters would be grounds for expulsion of the entire thing.

    However, many people also theorize that our dimension may be ruled by a larger dimension, and thus, there is a possible connection between such higher realities and the nature of ETs, whatever they are.

    In the same vein that extraterrestrials are alien and considered for the most part impossible, so is the origin of matter from nothing an alien concept.

    I was drawing a line between the strangeness of "aliens" as part of the UFO enigma, and the strangeness of the universe and moreover its origin.
    Just because the concept of "aliens" or ETs appears farfetched, it should not be discounted when the very idea of something existing in a kind of loop with no beginning or end is equally strange. Both are alien.

    Sorry if I wasn't addressing your actual question, though I tried to the best of my ability.
     
  8. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

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    Mr. A,
    Are you so interested in aliens and UFOs because you live in Britain? I've heard there are a lot of sightings and weird things that happens there. For instance, over half of the world's crop circles occur in the UK. Ever seen anything rather shifty?
     
  9. Since no one ever reads anything down here Francois, and being as you're such an admirable sort for asking, I'll let you into a tiny indiscretion...

    For a spell, it actually used to be my job to look into this exact sort of stuff full time. This isn't particularly to say a very great deal. For a spell equally I suppose one could say I actually qualified as a full time Pornographer as well. Like the UFO stuff, it kind of went with the job.

    In publishing it's the market which dictates content. If you're target market is interested in Flower Pots, you give them everything there is to know about flower pots. If they're interested in ET and UFO's, you tell them all about that. There's very little incentive to actually do anything but the most rudimentary of research on features published in a monthly magazine, especially with subject matter such as this, and coming from a background in actual journalism this had a tendency to get on every last nerve in my body. It was a well paid gig, cushy in the extreme, I got to interview and meet a good many interesting and entertaining people.

    But still, the fact that I was being hired in a given capacity and actively dissuaded from doing anything even remotely conforming to what my job description entailed, chaffed somewhat.

    Most of what I ran into consisted of exactly the sort of fair you'll find throughout the archives of a forum like Pseudoscience from one end of the internet to the next.

    Some though, genuinely, didn't.

    And that being the case, of course, one has a tendency to want to learn a little bit more. Partly it was the job, mostly just human nature. I had the privilege of interviewing a number of former pilots, ex-RAF and Commercial in the main. Went hand in hand with another actual longstanding interest of mine, aviation. Anyway, they were all chaps with a tale to tell. Objects sighted, reports filled in and filed. No blathering on about extraterrestrials or embellishing of "facts" - just straight forward observational reports given by chaps who knew what a sky looks like, knew what a plane can do and what it can't, knew how what they were describing might make them sound and yet sticking to their respective stories, despite some of the hullabaloo some had run into as a result.

    I found them plausible. Got to thinking about what they were describing, pondered could there actually be any form of relatively straight forward physics which could account for a vehicle behaving in the sort of manner consistent with these sorts of reports and found to my eternal amusement that actually there was.

    Gave me something actually sane to think about whist working out how to relay Mrs-X-from-Cheam's unearthly encounters with being from another world to a completely uncritical audience with an as close to almost straight face as I could muster...

    How can the relatively brief and conclusion free descriptions of actually trained observers possibly compete with the Mr and Mrs X's of this world, Francois? Everyone already knows the world is being visited by aliens, they knew it before the term Flying Saucer was ever invented - all that was ever required was proof and the Mr & Mrs X's of this world give everything everyone who ever gave a crap about the subject exactly what they want to hear, exactly how they like to hear it.

    I did this garbage for a living, it was my job. Hardly hard work, but nevertheless, work mitigated by a salary. I have few regrets and it amuses the hell out of me running across some story on the internet, pertaining to be fact, knowing as I do exactly where the story originates and people still buying it hook, line and sinker.

    One could almost call it cruel, but in Publishing it's the market that dictates content - never the other way around.

    And yet people can contrive to feel genuinely aggrieved that they never get what they actually want...

    And the funniest thing of all? It's perfectly possible that vehicles which conform to UFO description and behaviour are actually real. As long as I live, I doubt I'll ever give spit for any of the rest of the garbage that tends to go with that, and I'll go a good country mile to avoid like the plague just to make sure I don't have to, but those chaps I talked to - they did actually see what they described. I know it. There's no actually real physical reason why they shouldn't have. Nothing they relayed witnessing contravened the laws of either physics, nature or credibility in the slightest. I wouldn't be adversed, given the garbage I've helped peddle, giving at least lip service to the notion of making it so that, before the last of them finally kicks the bucket, they can know once and for certain that no, it wasn't a trick of the light or Venus or any of the rest of the other garbage that gets trotted out against the notion with the predictability of Mr and Mrs X's abduction experiences and exactly as much credibility.

    What can I say. I'm an absolute sucker for a lost cause....

    Did that answer you're question?

    A

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  10. TimeTraveler Immortalist Registered Senior Member

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    What about the likely possibility of alien micro-organisms or alien DNA?
     
  11. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

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    Wow, that's an interesting job you had, it sounds, Mr. A.
    That got me interested, but then you never elaborated on it. What kind of physics are you talking about? Are some of the maneauvers the pilots you interviewed talked about ones where an object would go 1,000 mph and then turn on a dime, instantly stop and then take off at 5,000 mph?

    It's a really weird subject, UFOs. They sometimes make the news over here, actually. A few years ago I remember reading in MSNBC about black triangles flying silently at low altitudes over freeways and they become quite a phenomenon. I've never seen one. But they don't make the news all that much.
    What's odd that I find about it is how few people have a rational middleground outlook on the topic. Either they think all UFOs are aliens in the sky or they think it's Venus, no matter how much it doesn't make sense.
    "But its lights flashed and changed colors and swooped down at 5,000 mph, turned around, and took off in the other direction over the horizon!"
    "It was Venus, god damn you!"
    Their biases get in the way to a ridiculous extent and it prevents them from seeing what's right in their faces.

    Like I mentioned before, we really don't get that much press coverage over UFO sightings. I've heard there are a lot more sightings in the UK area. Do UFOs make the news a lot over there?
     
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    ... It depends on what's on at the local cinema. Really. You'll find that when there's a buzz on, fresh on the back of something either TV or Hollywood (Spielberg's Taken was about the last fairly large shout) UFO and Alien stories crop up all over the shop as too reported sightings and general interest. With television news, not much on the national front, but local news feeds yes. Tabloids on the other hand have a long standing stock in trade with such fare - mostly crop circles, the odd UFO. Abduction's never been a subject in the main which has ever really taken over here, aside from the sort of glossy, full colour rag of a publication I was on of course. There's generally not all that many publications handle such fair these days, The Fortean Times excepted.

    Mostly though its UFO sightings and Crop Circles. We have a lot of air traffic and even more bored undergraduates over here. That's possibly the only difference.

    That's certainly one way of describing it, I suppose. In practice though, it was just a relatively clean but pokey office, half a dozen substandard PC's, some truly tacky postery on the walls and more emails than I'll ever voluntarily wish to be the recipient of again. Assignments were always good, but as I say, actual journalism was never particularly high on the agenda.

    Well, no. You're absolutely right. It's all either absolutely everything or absolutely nothing at all - not much in the way of mid-ground whatsoever. It the whole extraterrestrial angle - it demands polarisation of opinion. On the one hand, anyone can accept the notion of life of mostly any kind existing elsewhere in the Universe - even the most die-hard of UFO septic will readily conceed the point - but when UFO pundits bring things down to the frankly ludicrous levels of debate as they often do - discussion rarely centres on UFO's.

    It's all about extraterrestrials.

    The pro-lobby bang on as if the things in the first place are well established proven fact as well as every other half baked idea which seems to suggest that, on paper, X maybe possible therefore Y and Z naturally follow on as an inevitable consequence.

    I'm of the honest opinion that frankly few people in the history of the subject have ever truly given the first stuff about UFO's except in terms of what people honestly seem to believe UFO's represent - extraterrestrials, first, foremost and forever.

    If a person observes a plane flying, one can't possibly discern anything at all regarding the disposition and mating habits of the pilot. Where he hails from, what airport he took off from, indeed, which airport he is going to land. All of such issues can't possibly be reasoned simply based on merely what the eye can possibly see - but when it's a UFO, suddenly the world and his dog develop the ability to not only do as such, but more.

    They'll even draw you diagrams and charts just to prove it.

    No. Not much in the way of mid-ground you are pristinely correct. Given that pretty much all of what has become "Ufology" remains simply the expression of individual peoples various beliefs concerning what certain idea's mean to them - there simply is no real mid-ground to be found in the subject.

    What is claimed as being "known" is merely that which people anticipate and surmise. Always has been, likely always will.

    If you insist old chap, but I warn you: it contains moving pictures and only uses standard applied physics... HOW

    Don't worry, it's only a few pages long and mostly illustration. Each section is available in PDF, better quality and y'can browse at your leisure off line. Just hit the download button if the first page looks promising, if not just nod sympathetically and patiently and make out that you read it...

    Have fun,

    A

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    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 26, 2006
  13. kebabomatic Banned Banned

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    In russia we have lots of UFOs. small ones and big ones.

    Small UFO ate my dog and not give it back.
     
  14. Nickelodeon Banned Banned

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    kebabomatic, does your life revolve around dogs and kebabs?
     
  15. kebabomatic Banned Banned

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    No my friend. I am not shallow. i like monstertrucks and going to stripclubs too.
     
  16. Funny y'should mention that. I once owned a dog that ate a small UFO. Lamentably, he did very much so give it back. Bugger to get out of a leopard skin rug I'll tell you. Took the Butler weeks, poor man....

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  17. Gustav Banned Banned

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  18. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    What about it?
    And what makes you think it is likely?

    In terms of alien lifeforms DNA stands for Don't kNow Anything.
     
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    Gustav, you old devile! I'm inexcusably pleased to see you, thought you'd died or something. I trust you are well?
     
  20. ripleofdeath Registered Senior Member

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    it is an interesting statement of the absolutism of arrogence of the human leaders and those who dictate education systems.
    There is just as likely to be life forms in existence that have originated of the earth that would be deemed by the common person as alien in comparrison to the human species.
    It is still a fairly good guide as the the level of developmnent of the speices in how it defines its self and other life forms it has no direct control over.
    note fear is the main underlying tool used to control children which breeds adults controlled by fear and thinking with fear.

    now there is a turning toward more fundermental religios ideas in some western countrys which is turning education backwards and sending undercurrents of hate and biggotry into communaties around the world,
    all at a time when we are supposed to be coming together.
    instead the leaders are trying to drive us further apart using fear.

    soo much for intellegent life.

    Que<> Pink Floyd On The Turning Away
    http://www.lyricsfreak.com/p/pink+floyd/on+the+turning+away_20108622.html
     
    Last edited: Oct 3, 2006
  21. Gustav Banned Banned

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    mra

    doing alright, buddy

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    riple

    Kia ora, Kei te pehea koe?

    /wondering if memory serves..
     
  22. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    Technically that doesn't disprove Intelligent Life, it mearly proves while the Apathic herd like sheep, those that Cling to power do so by manipulation, no matter what the cost of such manipulation.

    In short, it's all a power game and always will be until Heirarchy is "Flattened" further.
     
  23. Well, they do say there better be some, somewhere out there, 'cos there's certainly bugger all down here...

    Which is the thing of it. Transposition. Basically our concept of alien intelligence is that of ourselves - what we hope for, what we aspire towards - in the darker recesses - what we fear. All, fundamentally speaking, about ourselves. I'm not quite sure what it is. Perhaps, possibly, without the benefit of any form of actual comparison readily to hand, we take words like "Aliens" and "Extraterrestrials" quite genuinely meaning to comprehend something of the nature of something not actually us at all - but in the end, it's the limits of human imagination which hold us back, reign us in and basically reduce the notion in popular concept down to that of simply every other shade of actor who ever donned Klingon make-up in Star Trek, or else just simply that of them being merely forigners...

    Even HG Wells was guilty of that much, and he's one of the buggers who first started the whole notion off. The Martians in War of The Worlds, though physically distinct from ourselves - basically they're no different from the Colonial British at the end of the Nineteenth Century. Weak, indifferent, arrogant, safe in their own assurance. Their technology makes them formidable - the Martians themselves, less even us.

    Ever since man first gazed at the stars, we've made up stories about them. Tales of Legends, myths and allegory. It's all we really know. Likely all we ever will. We need to understand. The ability to fictionalise, to transpose what we do know and understand onto some other stage so that, ultimately, we can understand ourselves better.

    The alternative is Clarke's Black Monoliths. Hard to get a purchase on, even for the author. Sooner or later, the human motivations start creeping back in...

    Our limitations. Our lack of actual knowledge and experience.

    Perhaps a better question to have asked would have been: Would aliens imagine such creatures as us?

    Ridiculous question, I suppose. But occasionally I like to ponder it. Somehow I very much doubt it. But thats just the limitations of my imagination at at work. I singularly doubt anything more profound than that....

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    ... I'm curiously pleased to hear it old man, been quiet as the grave down here without you...

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