Category: UFOs

Brand Spanking New Air Purifier!

Sena got a brand spankin’ new air purifier and it’s whisper quiet. It’s made by RENPHO. Air purifiers probably don’t reduce virus particles but they at least they give you the impression you’re doing something to keep the air clean in your home.

We had an air purifier years ago, and the whole unit had to be cleaned occasionally. This one has a filter you change every 6 months or so.

It’s easy to operate. Basically, you turn it on and forget it. Some of the directions are a little interesting. One of them is a table of what the different button symbols are. The title is “Defination.”

The list of cautions includes the instruction, “Do not place anything on top of the appliance and do not sit on the appliance.”

Why it would occur to anyone but an extraterrestrial to sit on the air purifier is beyond me.

There’s an air quality sensor light which glows a different color corresponding to how good or bad the air is in your house. Blue is very good; Green is good; Orange is bad; Red is polluted. Ours always glows a nice, comforting blue.

There’s a note below the air quality sensor light description:

“Note: Compared with professional instrument, the detecting result of this air quality sensor may has tolerance in accuracy, we suggest you regard the sensor detecting result as a reference only.”

I’m not sure how to interpret this note. Does “tolerance in accuracy” mean it has only tolerably fair accuracy, meaning good enough for government work? Would a canary work just as well?

The trouble shooting section contains an entry that might be helpful:

Problem: You can’t adjust any of the controls.

Cause: An Extraterrestrial Biological Entity (EBE) is sitting on top of the air purifier. Some EBEs are pretty finicky about air purifier settings. They might prevent you from changing them by contacting their superiors, who will abduct you and conduct various experiments using large probes.

Solution: Let the EBE have its way.

Men in Black Movies on Cable TV This Month!

I’m pretty excited because all of the Men in Black movies are going to be on cable September 9, 2023, which is a Saturday.  It’s on Paramount HD and several other streaming services. They start with the original Men in Black at 10:30 a.m. (Central Time), which I don’t care for. The other three sequels run right behind it in sequence. But then they restart at 5:30 PM—which means I would need to stay up way past my bedtime.

The one movie in the series you can see almost every night is the 4th sequel, Men in Black International. The other 3: Men in Black, Men in Black 2, and Men in Black 3 all seem to run every couple of months on cable or streaming services.

Anyway, I almost never miss an opportunity to watch the first 3 whenever I find out they’re on. I watched the 4th one a couple of times and that was enough.  I like the chemistry Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones had.

There’s an article on the web you can read to get up to speed on the movies. I disagree with the author on one point. Technically speaking, it was not Agent J who neuralyzed Beatrice. It was Agent K who zapped her with his neuralyzer. Agent J just refined Agent K’s memory adjustment script, which made it a team effort.

The AARO Finally Has a Website And is it Part of a Zero-Sum Game?

The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) finally has a website—more than a year after it was formed.

It looks like there’s an intriguing message in the section “Coming Soon: US Government UAP-Related Program/Activity Reporting.” It says AARO will accept reports of UAP from current government employees who know of any programs or activities related to UAPs dating back to 1945.

One sentence tells you “This form is intended as an initial point of contact with AARO; it is not intended for conveying potentially sensitive or classified information.  Following the submission of your report, AARO staff may reach out to request additional detail or arrange for an informational interview.”

Several other sections provide further information and pictures and videos on UAP.

I wonder if all this is a reaction to the House Oversight Committee Hearing on UAP on July 26, 2023. Either the website has been under construction for all of last year and was just finished a couple days ago or it was just thrown together recently.

This makes me think of a couple of things, one is Dr. George Dawson’s blog post “Is This An Episode of the X-Files?” The other is an X-Files episode itself, “Zero Sum” which Sena and I just saw a couple of nights ago. We don’t remember seeing it when it first aired in 1997. You can read the Wikipedia article about the episode.

The gist of it is that Assistant Director Skinner makes a deal with the Smoking Man in which the latter will save Agent Scully’s life (she’s dying of cancer related to alien experiments) if Skinner hides the death of a postal worker who was killed by a swarm of bees carrying smallpox. This is part of a complex plot by a group called the Syndicate which is either trying to work with extraterrestrials to either exterminate the human race or save it (depending on which episode you watch) by using bees as a vehicle to transmit either smallpox or a vaccine to cure the Black Oil, which screws you up pretty bad. Part of this is my interpretation because the storyline sometimes is not clear about this to me.

Anyway, the back-and-forth actions and reactions of the characters, especially Skinner and the Smoking Man, are pretty good examples of a Zero-Sum game, loosely defined in that neither gets much of an edge on the other as they both try to counter each other’s efforts in what is probably just a power struggle from the Smoking Man’s perspective and a desperate effort to save Scully’s life from Skinner’s perspective.

Anyway, I wonder if the UAP reporters and the government (including the AARO) might be in some kind of zero-sum game. UAP reporters try to get the government to admit that Extraterrestrial Biological Entities (EABs) and Extraterrestrial spacecraft exist. But the government denies it. Neither side ever seems to get much further ahead of the other.

X-Files Notes: Alex Krycek Is Not from Tunguska

Sena and I used to watch the X-Files back in the 1990s, but I must have missed quite a few of them. My memory is at best spotty for a lot of episodes, probably because I was on call a lot as a resident and as a psychiatry faculty member at the hospital.

The other night I saw the Tunguska episode in which Mulder travels to a gulag in Russia to investigate the black oil contamination, which was of extraterrestrial origin. A lot of the episodes had titles which I had to look up on the internet to find out what they meant. Anyway, a rock of extraterrestrial origin is found and becomes the subject of an intense search after black oil spurts into the face of a scientist who was dumb enough to poke a drill in it and who then becomes catatonic.

Actually, if I have the Wikipedia facts right, the episode was not inspired by the Tunguska explosion in a place called Tunguska, Siberia in Russia in 1908. There’s a recent story about it posted on the web in June of 2023. The gist is that a large asteroid impact killed animals and destroyed millions of trees in the area. The mystery didn’t leave a crater, though. At one time, some people thought the devastation was caused by a crashing extraterrestrial spacecraft. Long story short, a similar event occurred in 2013 and the explanation is that the asteroid broke apart 15 miles above the ground, generating a massive shock wave that injured thousands of people and blew out a lot of windows. The importance of it is that events like that can occur every several hundred years, making it important to plan on how to prevent them.

OK, so the other science fact pertaining to the X-Files episode is that, despite it being named for the Tunguska episode, it was actually inspired by the Allan Hill 84001 event, which was the discovery of a Martian meteorite in the Allan Hills in Antarctica in 1984. In 1996 scientists thought they found fossils of bacteria in this rock, which led everybody to think this meant there had been life on Mars. Even United States President Bill Clinton made a speech about it, although later he was more often connected with a blue dress than with black oil. Eventually, there were other features of the rock which led to abandoning the idea that the features were bacteria fossils.

Confused yet? The black oil contamination thing is a weaponized extraterrestrial substance which infects humans and against which the Russians and the Americans were both working on a vaccine to combat it. As far as I know, neither planned a vaccine mandate.

This is a two-part show and, get ready for more confusing titles, the title of which is “Terma.” The episode has a tagline, “E pur si muove,” (instead of the usual “You can’t handle the truth!” No wait, it’s actually “The truth is out there”) which is not translated in the show, but which means “And yet it moves.” That’s about Galileo’s investigation of whether the Earth moves around the sun or vice versa. Galileo said the Earth moves around the Sun, but the Roman Inquisition forced him to recant it because the religious dogma was opposed to heliocentrism. He did but under his breath he supposedly mumbled “And yet it moves.” Galileo probably had Oppositional Defiant Disorder as a child.

I’m not sure what the tagline “E pur si muove” means in this context. This is just my guess, but maybe it refers to the persisting opposition of Mulder and Scully to the government hiding the “truth” of the existence of extraterrestrials.

I found out that terma (the word means “hidden treasure”) is a set of Buddhist secret teachings that are hidden from the world. A terma could be a text or object (like a rock) buried in the ground or a crystal, perhaps hidden in space. In the end, an old KGB agent manages to destroy the rock by blowing it up. He gets away and returns to Russia where he finds a guy named Alex Krycek waiting for him and who has an artificial left arm (with which he uses to stir tea) and who congratulates him on his success.

Now this Alex Krycek guy is a known villain who is in and out of X-Files episodes, even coming back from the dead. He’s this traitorous, murdering, lying devil who, judging from Mulder’s reaction to him every time he sees him, is Mulder’s favorite punching bag. This is partly because Krycek probably killed Mulder’s father.

But in this and every other episode in which they meet, Mulder evidently gets a charge out of repeatedly smacking Krycek. A typical interaction would be Mulder seeing Krycek, and then punching the crap out of him while grinning with great satisfaction. Notably, in just about any other fight Mulder gets into with anyone who is not Krycek, it’s Mulder who typically gets beat up. But the usual exchange with Krycek goes like this:

Mulder goes into a bar. Mulder sees Krycek. Mulder whops the stuffing out of him, just for the heck of it. Mulder gets tired and says:

“I’m tired of whopping the stuffing out of you, Krycek. I’m also hungry; so, while I snack on these sunflower seeds I’m incessantly eating in every episode—beat the crap out of yourself right now!”

And then Krycek beats himself up.

The only way to understand their relationship is to assume that Krycek is the worst turncoat double agent and compulsive liar you ever met and typically works for anyone who offers him the most money including most terrestrial countries and any extraterrestrial governments bent on taking over every fast-food franchise on the planet earth (“Yeah, I’ll have the mutilated cattle burger with black oil sauce, three and a half pickles, cheese, ketchup and secret vaccine on the side”).

If you have cable, you can see X-Files on the Comet network.

Okay, More Drain Tile Grate Flipping

Well, on Saturday morning we noticed that a different drain tile grate was flipped in our back yard. Same problem as the other one that I blogged about last year. I put the wormhole gear clamp back on the other one and so far, so good.

Now I’m considering getting another clamp for the other grate.

I can think of a few animals around here that might be guilty of flipping grates: deer, feral cats, dogs, raccoons, and the like. We did catch a big raccoon on video up in the Mulberry tree a couple months ago. On the other hand, it’s not happening to our new neighbor’s grate.

I can’t rule out some kid pulling a prank on us. But I wouldn’t know who it is. As I may have mentioned last year, there aren’t any young kids in the immediate neighborhood.

I’m considering setting up our critter cam again. You never know. I might catch an extraterrestrial on camera.

Sena Returning New Coffee Maker Today Already!

Well, Sena’s returning the new Mecity coffee maker today. Go figure, we just got it. There’s really nothing wrong with how it works. It’s a little tough to remove the pod after the brewing is done. It would be nice to have a machine able to make a full mug of coffee, which would mean a capacity exceeding the 10 oz limit.

I don’t know. It might have something to do with the extraterrestrial swimming in her cup.

Parody vs Satire on Old X-File Show

I see Dr. George Dawson blogged about an interesting movie he saw. And Dr. H. Steven Moffic watched an interesting play the other day.

I like science fiction. I watched an old X-File show the other night, “War of the Coprophages.” You can read a Wikipedia article for a nice summary of the plot and more. You can watch X-File episodes on the Comet TV network on cable and a few streaming services.

The reason I like this is because of the parody. Many reviewers say it doesn’t rise to the level of satire, and it’s tough to challenge that view. I usually tell the difference based on a pretty good distinction you can find at this web site. Early on in the show you can tell it’s going to be one of the Monster-of-the-Week (MOTW) episodes.

The show makes fun of itself with funny lines and sight gags, several of which could almost make you gag. One makes use of an effect that makes you think a cockroach is crawling across your TV screen. The Wikipedia article calls that a fourth wall effect.

I like the big sign on Dr. Jeff Eckerle’s building where he has a lot of manure which he’s using to research how to make methane from dung. The sign says, “ALT FUELS, Inc: Waste is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” It’s clearly a parody, although I found a legitimate recycling web site in Helsinki which actually uses the phrase “Waste is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” Who knew? I can’t tell if they got the idea from the X-Files.

I also got a kick out the conversation between the scientist, Dr. Ivanov, and Mulder in which Ivanov pretty much sticks a pin in the balloon of Mulder’s conception of extraterrestrials being humanoid—of course they’d be robots according to Ivanov.

Later as the show is wrapping up with Mulder typing his report, he describes the distinction between simple and direct robotic problem solving and human higher brain function, with the latter suffering by comparison because of our tendency to get lost in default mode network ruminations which often go nowhere. He ends up seeing a giant cockroach which looks robotic crawling towards him—and flattens it with an X-File report.

The show is a string of crap jokes, which I loved. But that’s not because I love crap. I just like it when we’re deflated. It cuts us down to size—about the size of a cockroach. Sometimes that’s about the size of the difference between parody and satire.

The Drain Grate Flipper is Back

Some of you may remember last year’s drain grate flipping saga in which something removed one of our back yard tile drain grates nearly every day for a while last fall. It’s happening again! This time it occurred during a pretty fierce heat wave which is still ongoing. It was so hot, the videos and photos we got were really hazy.

That adventure began in late September of 2022 and went on past the middle of October. I wrote a few posts about the saga. We set up a critter cam to see if we could get it on video. We caught deer running across the yard and that’s it, except for a UFO. Check our YouTube “Caught in the Critter Cam Lights” on October 17, 2022.

Yesterday, we noticed the drain grate was off again, after a nearly a year of no problems with it. Now, a couple of months ago, a couple of other drain grates popped off, but it looked like the explanation was heavy rainfall. The pipes were full of debris and the lid was very close to the edge of the pipes.

This time, the same lid that popped off last year popped off again and it was a replay of what looks like an ongoing mystery.

I’m not ready to set up the critter cam just yet. I’m a little unsure of whether it’ll work OK in triple digit heat.

Heat Joke Alert!

OK, I got sort of a Dad joke about the heat. It’s about 106 degrees now with the heat index in Iowa City.

Q: What do you call a flying saucer on a really hot day?

A: An Unidentified Frying Object

Believe it or not, I couldn’t find this joke anywhere on the internet. So I guess that makes it original.

Sena wants to try frying an egg, and melt ice cubes and/or an ice cream bar on our driveway tomorrow.

Leave comments trying to talk her out of it and/or leave a heat joke of your own.

Thank you for your time.

Maybe an Iowa State Fair Contest Would Settle the Score in UFO Flap

I just saw the news story about the whistleblower David Grusch a couple days ago. Apparently, Mr. Grusch’s personal medical record was obtained through the state of Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and released to the public. He was one of three people who testified recently at the House Oversight Committee hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). He reported that the Department of Defense (DoD) had knowledge of extraterrestrial craft and “biologics” (extraterrestrial bodies?).

This reminds me of one of the final comments by one of the other three witnesses, which is worth framing as a quote:

“Don’t make the fish bigger than it was.” — retired Commander David Fravor of the U.S. Navy.

The current director of the DoD organization for UFOs, Sean Kirkpatrick, PhD, who heads the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), expressed his objection in no uncertain terms to Mr. Grusch’s testimony, calling it insulting.

Anyway, I had to learn a little bit more about the FOIA, and found out that in addition to the federal government FOIA, each state has its own FOIA process. I looked up the Virginia state FOIA, and usually personal medical records are one of the exempted files. Apparently, they can still release them.

I think this might be an attempt to discredit Mr. Grusch. I’m puzzled by the release of his medical history. I don’t know anything about specific protections for retaliation against whistleblowers, but I would think exposing anyone’s medical record would count.

Not to spread any more conspiracy theories, but what if this whole thing is a well-orchestrated complex distraction from the general shambles of our political system? It would tend to discourage other whistleblowers from coming forward. Maybe that’s the intent.

If politicians and people in general were to make a concerted effort to treat each other with civility, respect, and a sense of humor, maybe these embarrassing sideshows could be minimized.

I don’t know if UAP involve advanced civilizations from across the galaxy and I doubt it. In fact, I tend to think a quote from Men in Black would fit:

“Human thought is so primitive it’s looked upon as an infectious disease in the better galaxies.”

I’m pretty sure most ETs have been steering clear of us for a long time.

How about this: the Iowa State Fair is on now, and it runs from August 10-20. I haven’t checked this out with anyone at the Fair, but if we could persuade David Grusch and Sean Kirkpatrick to settle their differences by competing in one or more of the contests coming up in the coming week, we might be able to get them to shake hands and have some laughs. Sena and I have never been to the Iowa State Fair, but if this event could be added, I think we could swing a trip there.

I see that the Cow Chip Throwing contest is scheduled for August 16 at 11 a.m. That would be a knee slapper.

It’s too late to arrange for them to compete in the Monster Arm Wrestling contest, which is this Sunday. Could a special event be scheduled later?

How about a cribbage game? The Cribbage Tournament is on August 20, starting at 10 a.m. with registration and the games start at 11 a.m.  Now that would be special since Sena and I are fans of the game. David and Sean would have to learn how to play cribbage ahead of time, and it’s not that hard.

There are other events, but the guys need to get ready and decide soon so they can enter. And they should notify me so that Sena and I can make the trip to Des Moines and catch the action.

Both winner and loser should get free corn dogs.