It's A-Lie-Ev!

In a flurry of media attention, a group of scientists got together this past week and announced they were "99% certain" that there is life on Mars, based on a second look at 36-year-old Viking data.

No shit, Sherlock.

For those of us who have followed this stuff since the 60s, that was akin to announcing that Jupiter has four moons, based on a re-evaluation of Galileo's observations.  Way ahead of you, Bub.

At this rate, it'll be another 20 years or so before they announce that Mars has trees and standing water, based on a closer look at Mars Global Surveyor's images.

If you still have a memory left, you may recall the banner headlines in 1976, that Viking landers had discovered microbial life in two of their three experiments.  The test that has recently come to the fore again was the Labeled Release experiment, in which a spoonful of dirt was dumped into a canister, soaked with 'chicken soup' that had radioactive carbon markers, and then measured the gases released.  If there was life, the reasoning went, it would eat the 'soup' and then respire the tagged carbon, which would then be measured as a positive sign of life activity.

Well, the amount of tagged carbon in the canister exploded, and in fact, showed circadian rhythm in the amounts released.  During daylight hours, the amount of carbon increased, and at night it decreased.

In the second phase of the experiment, the sample was cooked to sterilize it, the idea being that if the positive sign was really life, then the carbon release would stop after killing the 'bugs'.  Sure enough, it did.

Gil Levin, the guy who designed the experiment, has been jumping up and down for decades saying his device found life.  But NASA, in its infinite wisdom, said, "No, it's just a chemical reaction in the soil."  They have maintained this stance despite years of attempts to recreate the conditions in the lab by making 'fake' Mars soil and running the same tests on it.  Haven't succeeded yet.

A number of scientists proposed perchlorates in the soil as a possible chemical that could react in a way similar to the Viking results.  Problem was that no one had proof there were perchlorates in Mars soil.  All the little rovers running around up there testing the soil couldn't find perchlorate anywhere.  Suddenly, the Phoenix lander at the north pole found some!  That's right, in a soil sample taken from right next to the lander, they found perchlorate in the soil, which proved that either the Viking results were not life, or that the soil was contaminated by the lander's rockets that used, ahem, perchlorate as a reactor.

And so the NASA circle-jerk goes on, as they do everything in their power to deny that what most normal human beings can see is not there.

In subsequent years, NASA has sent scads of photographers, landers, crawlers, and rollers up there to do everything BUT look for life.  All these toys have been loaded with tools to test geology and look for signs of CONDITIONS that would have been FAVORABLE for life in the ANCIENT past, but nothing even remotely capable of looking for EXTANT life.

Clarke's Trees

In one rather famous case involving the current rovers, the close-up camera took a stunning picture of a crinoid fossil, which the machine proceeded to grind to dust at NASA's command, in it's effort to look for CONDITIONS.

In orbital photos, there are dozens of examples of lakes with things that look just like giant algae blooms.  They grow and shrink with the seasons, and even have a blue-green color.  There are dozens of photos of giant objects half-a-mile tall and as big across that look just like trees.  They grow and die with the seasons and are even called Arthur Clarke's trees, because he could see the obvious in the photos.

One has to ask the obvious question.  With experiments that showed such strong signs of life, and with all the photographic evidence for macro life forms, why hasn't NASA sent a single device to Mars in nearly 40 years to test directly for extant life on the planet?

In fact, they have gone out of their way to represent Mars as alien and inhospitable.  The first Viking photos from the surface showed blue skies and ocher landscapes.  Earthly desert-dwellers would have felt right at home.  The first photos from the current rovers were also initially released in true color, showing blue skies and multi-hued rolling hills.

Eventually, sooner than later, they tweak the colors to give us pink skies and deep red dirt, despite the fact that the color calibration charts are skewed far out of their normal color ranges.  In order for those colors to actually exist, it would require sunlight to be different on Earth and Mars, which just ain't gonna happen.  Sorry boys.  If Mars were circling a red giant like Betelgeuse, I might buy it.  But the Sun's light output doesn't shift color temperature in the few million miles between us and them.

On Earth, bacteria and algae live in every conceivable nook and cranny, under every possible environmental condition.  Even in our own guts, bacteria thrive in acid baths and complete darkness, occasionally swamped by anything we eat and drink.  Why is it so hard to imagine them living on a planet where, in the summer on the equator, in mid-day, most of us would be quite comfortable in T-shirt and shorts (give or take an oxygen mask)?

On top of all this evidence, in recent years, multiple machines have noted a vast methane bloom from certain areas at certain times of the year on Mars.  On Earth, methane is predominantly produced by living things farting, like Reagan's cows.  And since methane is highly volatile, especially in sunlight, it wouldn't persist much beyond a century in any appreciable amounts, so it is being renewed somehow.

Most of the NASA crowd claims the methane is from geolocical processes, though despite a huge and ever-growing library of data that is being scoured 25/8, they can't find a single geological event that could, much less is, produce methane.

Yet the methane blooms increase and decrease with the seasons and times of the day, much like the tagged carbon experiment on Viking.  Gee, you don't suppose that means LIFE do you?!

What is boils down to is: if it walks, quacks and shits like a duck, then it's not a turkey, OK?  Us normal thinking people are left with two options: either NASA scientists have their heads so far up a duck's patoot that they can't see daylight, or they are hiding something.  Granted, it could be an agency full of Rainmen idiot savants, but I prefer to give them enough credit to walk upright, and that they are willfully lying to us and obfuscating the plain truth to save their precious hides and grants.

Frankly, I have no problem believing the Universe is overflowing with bacteria and algae.  After all, on Earth, both survive in places that would kill a man in a matter of seconds.  They love it...trive on it.  They are everywhere...the deepest ocean, coldest polar regions, inside our guts, on our teeth, swarming on feces, chowing on oil and nuclear waste.  Who's to say that every nook and cranny of the Universe isn't just stuffed full of the critters?

Now, supposedly intelligent beings like humans?  Well, that's a different problem.  Maybe the Universe only creates one species like us per galaxy.  After all, the Universe can't afford to have wildly suicidal, pretentious and overly avaricious beings just everywhere.  Certainly, we haven't met many destructive creatures like ourselves out there.  But even if there's only one species per galaxy, then there's literally hundreds of billions of war-like, idiotic demon races out there.

And if you want to defend the human race, I'm willing to entertain the argument on an individual basis, but as a whole...forget it.  I already win before you open your mouth.

Finally, I can say that there was life on the Moon for at least a week and a half.  During that week and a half, six human being walked, slept and worked there.  Their waste so litters the landscape that satellites can photograph the evidence.  I can also argue that life exists on Mars right this minute.  There's a rover there controlled by human beings that is still active, and another on the way.  As the movie "Avatar" argued, a tele-presence is just as damaging as a human presence.  And who wants to argue that anonymous online avatars aren't controlled by living human beings?

Cogito ergo sum.  If I control tools, no matter how far away, then it is still 'I' doing it.  Ergo, life is present.  Does the TeeVee not change channels just because you push a button rather than get up and go over to the TeeVee?  Are DARPA's robots any less lethal because a man doesn't directly pull the trigger?

So, even if Mars is truly a dead, sterile world (fat chance), it has life because there is a machine directly controlled by living beings somewhere else in the Universe.

'Life' is such a moveable target.  What we call life, and what IS life, don't always match up.  And just because we finite, insane beings call something inanimate or inorganic 'non-life' doesn't make it so.  That is only our observations, which are infinitely fallible.

In the end, the definition of life, and its detection, is controlled by grant money and vested interests.  If life were found on another planet, then huge sums of money would flow from geology to biology.  JPL and NASA survive on geology and a particular story line.  If the focus and story change, then the entrenched powers would go hungry and the power would shift to another camp.

Same goes for religion.  The world's religions are based on humanity being the center of everything.  If it turns out there is Creation on other worlds, completely separate from ours, then think how many people would be out of a job.  All those priests, preachers, imams, monks, and shamans begging on the streets, vying for handouts along with all the planetary geologists.  Can't have that.

In the final analysis, you can't trust anyone in a position of authority for the simple reason that they will lie to you to keep from losing their jobs.  Would you march in to your boss' office and announce that you've just figured out a way to eliminate your job?  Then why would you trust anyone else to do that, unless they've figured out how to make money off of the truth?

The only truth in life is what you figure out for yourself.  Even the two-and-a-half people that read this blog on a daily basis should not trust me.  I may have some stake in the outcome I am promoting.  Therefore, it is up to the individual to decide.  What is out there and how does it affect me?  And, how does a major change in the way of viewing the Universe affect my ability to make a living, and can I survive in that world?

And you thought life was so simple, didn't you?

REVIEW: Dark Mission

Title: Dark Mission
Subtitle: The Secret History of NASA
Authors: Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara
Published by Feral House
ISBN: 978-1-932595-48-2
Copyright 2009 (revised edition)
soft cover, 616 pages, footnotes, B&W/color plates
==========================================

As anyone who has read Hoagland's work knows, he writes like a TeeVee pitchman and gets paid by the punctuation mark.  His style is a bit tiring after a while and trying to keep up with all the brackets, braces, ellipses, and quote marks wears on the reader.

Fortunately for the reader, he is tempered a bit by co-author Mike Bara.  Bara brings a somewhat steadier tone and muted hyperbole to the topic at hand.  That said, it is quite obvious which of the authors edited which parts of the book.

Style points aside, the information in the book is, in a word, astounding.  The authors begin in the late 1800s and build their case meticulously through the development of rocketry, Operation Paperclip, the formation of NASA, and finally up to today's headlines.

Their thesis comes down to the likely existence of life and the remains of an ancient, advanced civilization that spanned the solar system.  They go on to pain-stakingly build the case that some elements within NASA have been aware, even before landing on other moons and planets, that these things were there.  They also posit, based on a study commissioned by NASA in the early 60s called the "Brooking Report," that these groups have established a careful time-line of information release to literally engineer society to accept the profound implications of these discoveries.

The authors do a rather thorough job of outlining the 'invisible hand' behind the slow trickle of information and the deliberate social conditioning that the aware reader is already aware of, though may not yet be able to define.  In other words, the authors give the reader a pretty good idea of who "they" are, and what "they" are up to behind the scenes.

The authors take us on a sometimes tedious journey, event by event, mission by mission, to build their argument.  They provide the reader with ample examples, quotes, images, mathematical formulae, and documented events.  Even those who have closely followed Hoagland's work will gain new insight and additional background and many of his more astounding claims.

In a nutshell, Hoagland argues that NASA is composed of several competing groups.  At the most over-arching level, he speculates there are "owls" and "roosters."  The owls are seeking to hide and control any information beyond 'dirt and rocks,' concerning other solar system bodies.  The roosters are supposedly fighting to finally release the information and let the pieces fall where they may.

At a secondary level, Hoagland defines the Nazis, Masons and Wizards who, as he says, infest the inner workings of the space program.  All three groups, as the author notes, are steeped in ancient myths, rituals and beliefs, which color NASA's operations.  The Nazi's, of course, are von Braun's clique, brought to the US under Paperclip after WWII.  The Masons, obviously, are high-ranking members of that secret society.  The Wizards are along the lines of Jack Parsons, founder of JPL, who was a singularly strange character, who at one point, with his friend L. Ron Hubbard, tried to breed the Anti-Christ.  Lest one scoff, this is well-documented by Parson's own writings, as well as others.

The authors then go on to exhaustively document NASA's strange predilection for using ritualistic dates, stellar alignments and ancient symbology in practically every aspect of the operation.  They define five stellar objects and three specific points on the sky (horizon, 19.5 degrees and 33 degrees), and then carefully document how these select objects and alignments play heavily in virtually every aspect of the NASA program.

They go on to show the overwhelming use of certain symbols in official mission logos.  Certainly, even the casual observer can detect the common use of Orion throughout NASA's history.  The homage to the Egyptian goddess Isis becomes apparent, as well.  Blue triangles (symbol of the star Sirius) and even naming the space station ISS are but two.

The authors then move on to re-iterate all of Hoagland's efforts over the years.  Step by step and image by image, the reader is shown the rather large body of evidence pointing to what Hoagland calls "archologies" on multiple solar system bodies, particularly the Moon and Mars, but certainly not limited to those.  The authors are careful not to come outright and claim the existence of ET ruins, but they make a clear case for investing in more research, and at the very least, 'official' recognition that there are obvious mysteries with amazing implications for all of Mankind.

The authors, having built a solid case for their archologies, for NASA rituals, and for a hidden agenda, then turn to documenting multiple lines of evidence for extant life on Mars.  In this, as in the other arguments, they do not limit themselves to just NASA documentation.  They present findings from Russian, Japanese and European missions, as well.  The back up their own claims with those of other researchers, including NASA scientists.  Certainly, anyone who follows the space program knows of Dr. Gil Levin's decades-long quest to have the findings of his Viking life experiments re-examined.  Even at the time, it made headlines that Viking had found evidence of respiration, metabolism and circadian rhythms.

The authors go on to point out strong evidence of liquid water, mud, pools, lychens, algae, and even trees, which are commonly names after Arthur C. Clarke, who remarked unequivocally that they appeared to be huge trees, with trunks, branches and leaves.  At least as far as the water goes, NASA has admitted that much.

Hoagland and Bara lament the culture in which we live, where people require the admission of 'authorities' in order to believe the plain evidence of their senses.  One common question, not only leveled against the authors, but at independent researchers in general is, "How could 'they' keep something so big as proof of life off the Earth covered up for so long?"  The answer is quite simple, and the authors take great pains to try and overcome it, humans are biased against extraordinary information.  As a group, we will not accept what we plainly perceive, if the information is too far outside our daily experience.  We depend heavily on the blessing of 'authorities' to confirm or deny what we believe.

What comes through clearly in this book is the sense of awe and excitement engendered by these lines of inquiry.  In a sterile Universe in which humans are the pinnacle of creation, we might expect to find accidental patterns, such as the Old Man in the Mountain, or the Man On The Moon, but Mount Rushmore is rather unlikely.  This fact alone argues that the massive and growing amounts of evidence for artificial objects scattered throughout the solar system must point to an actual phenomenon.  If we are the first, and Neil Armstrong was the first of us to set foot off the Earth, then we should not find more than the occasional curiosity of Nature anywhere in our solar system, let alone Faces, pyramids, glass domes and tunnels, and buried cities.  We certainly shouldn't find green patches on Mars that expand and recede with the seasons.  What's more, shouldn't our 'civilian' agencies, for which we pay dearly, be giving us the truth?  At the bare minimum, they should be giving us the raw data that we paid for, so that we may investigate for ourselves.

The authors give the reader multiple examples of NASA's agenda by pointing to the many expensive missions to Mars that are tasked with single investigations.  Any evidence for other lines of inquiry are soundly denied and hidden.  In the case of Viking, even when the mission is ostensibly to find evidence of life on Mars, NASA simply denies the data that confirms the objective.

One prime example of this was the Phoenix lander.  The spacecraft cost billions of dollars and used thousands of man-hours, and when it landed, NASA made a huge deal of stating that it had found ice on the planet.  Any 13-year-old, for the price of a telescope and waiting for good viewing could have told us that.  The polar ice caps have been plainly obvious for well over a century.

Another example is the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.  Their mission was to find evidence of 'past' water on Mars.  The fact that they repeatedly bogged down in mud, took unmistakable photos of fossils and were routinely washed clean of collected dust did not deter NASA from its singular focus on sedimentary rocks and phosphates.  NASA even went as far as to destroy a number of fossils with the grinding tool, just to make the point that they weren't looking for those things.

By the end of the book, the reader is left with a distinct feeling of frustration, disappointment and even anger.  One ponders why an agency that is nominally public and receives billions of dollars of tax money can't seem to see their hands in front of their faces.  The anger comes from the occult rituals and obfuscating games that NASA has played with truly Earth-shaking information, and their flat-out refusal to investigate those things which the public, who pays their salaries, obviously want investigated.

Hoagland and Bara effectively argue their case, using multiple lines of evidence, documentation from disparate sources, and the unmistakable evidence of the data itself.  Multiple researchers, multiple investigations and even NASA's own history and admissions stand in stark contract to the agency's recalcitrant refusals to give the world the truth.

One could argue, as Hoagland and Bara do, that the Brookings Report is justification for careful social engineering, to prepare the unwashed masses for what is really 'out there.'  However, one could just as easily argue that secret information is a source of power, and that the Brookings Report simply offers justification for the secrecy...plausible deniability, in other words.

In any case, the well-informed individual must place this book alongside the works of other careful and credible researchers who have come to the same conclusions through various lines of investigation.  NASA is but one agency in a political leviathan, in which secrecy and lies are mother's milk.  That the military and CIA have been heavily involved in NASA since its inception should come as no surprise.

Often, it is difficult for many people to articulate the definition of 'they,' and to readily offer up documented examples of how 'they' manipulate and control the masses.  Hoagland and Bara have done a masterful, if somewhat tedious, job of it in a tome dense with information and directions for personal investigation.  It is easy, as many have, to dismiss Hoagland as arrogant and egotistical, but the ad hominem attack only discredits the messenger, not the message.  What comes through strongest in this book is the authors' sense of wonder and excitement, and the deep frustration at being thwarted at every turn in trying to satiate their curiosity.

In the closing pages, the reader is left with the distinct, though often misquoted, feeling that, "The Universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we CAN imagine."

If the authors leave the reader with the desire to add his voice to the chorus of those calling for openess and transparency in the sciences, then one assumes they have been successful.

To The Moon, Alice!

How would you like to enjoy one of the greatest mysteries in the known Universe?

It's possible for you to look directly at it with your own eyes.  You can see it nearly every night of the year.  People write songs and poems about it.  It figures into all of our legends and myths.  And it's one of the most mysterious things we've ever encountered.

Isaac Newton, father of calculus, creator of the Three Laws of Motion, guru of gravity, and the original Apple dude, said that he could explain the motions of the entire known Universe, except for the Moon.  Isaac Asimov, creator of the Three Laws of Robotics and all-around great sci-fi writer, said there was no greater mystery than the Moon.  And with all our super-computers and space telescopes and even having walked around up there, we still can't figure it out.

Bet you thought the Moon was the least of our problems, didn't you?

Just so you know, I have had a deep and abiding interest in astronomy and manned space exploration since I can remember.  I studied astrophysics under Dr. Larry Pinske at the University of Houston and brought home straight As.  So I know a little bit about these things.  I can tell you that all the self-assured statements about where the Moon came from are not worth the hot air they are made with.

The prevailing dogma at the Church of Our Lady of Know-It-All, is that the Moon was formed when an 'extra' Mars crashed into Earth, and the resulting rubble pile coalesced into the Moon, roughly 4 billion years ago.  All fine and good, except no one seems to be able to explain how an 'extra' Mars was flying around loose defying all of Kepler's Laws of Orbital Dynamics.

The idea is that the Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago, and we get that number because that's the oldest rock we've ever found on Earth.  One teeny-weeny little problem: some of the rocks the astronauts brought back from the Moon are a billion years older than that, AND the dirt they were sitting on is a billion years older than that!  AAANNNDDD, some of the rocks don't match the general composition of the Moon or the Earth, meaning they don't come from either.

"Oh, pshaw," you say, "The astronauts didn't go to the Moon.  It was all faked by Stanley Kubrik at Disney Studios."

Well, remember Dr. Pinke?  He did studies on the astronauts helmets.  There were microscopic pits and spikes inside the helmets made by cosmic rays striking the material.  The astronauts all complained of transient flashes of light INSIDE their eyeballs, which later was confirmed to be cosmic rays striking small particles inside the liquid of the eyes.  Also, a number of the moon-walkers have died of rare cancers.  All of these data points add up to men who have been outside the van Allen radiation belts.

I'm willing to entertain the idea that PARTS of the Moon transmissions were faked by Stanley, though, to cover the times when the astronauts were messing with things we aren't allowed to know about.

There's many other problems, too.

You know those dark areas on the face of the Moon, called maria, right?  Unlike much of the rest of the Moon, they are composed of a titanium alloy, and dead in the center of each one is a nearly-perfectly round, 20-mile deep object called a 'mascon,' or mass concentration.  Absolutely no explanation for those.  They are large enough that if you stood on the edge of Mare Tranquilitus (where Apollo 11 landed) and dropped a plumb-bob, it would stand several degrees off plumb due to the gravitational pull of the mascon.

The astronauts left a bunch of expensive equipment all over the place, among which were seismographs.  They measure, naturally, Moon-quakes.  Just to get some readings, NASA crashed a lot of stuff into the Moon, like left-over craft and rocket parts.  Guess what?  The Moon rings like a bell when you hit it.  One particular instance occured when Apollo 13's third stage hit the Moon, causing it to ring for several hours.

Oh, and it turns out that the Moon is really hard, too.  The astronauts had a hell of a time trying to get core samples.  One, I don't remember who, nearly fell down trying to turn the drill.  Related to that is the fact that none of the Moon's craters are deeper than 3 kilometers, despite being hit with some pretty big 'somethings.'  So, even big pieces of 'space stuff' can't get very deep into the surface.

One of my favorites is that the Moon dust brought back has lots of little iron balls in it.  That's not necessarily weird, but the fact that they don't rust is.  There's also a bunch of elements and compounds that are vanishingly rare on Earth, including iridium and uranium-237.  Sure, we can make it in the lab, but lying around on the ground?  That's a toughie.

In general terms, the Moon is 1/4 the size of Earth, which is pretty damn big, as moons go.  It also happens to be the exact right size and in the exact right orbit to have nearly the exact same apparent size as the Sun, so we get things like solar eclipses.  The chances of that happening completely by random chance are, well, virtually nil.

The Moon is also in a near-perfect circular orbit almost exactly over the Earth's equator, even though the Earth is tilted 23-degrees to the side.  Again, don't bother calculating the odds on that, since most calculators don't have that many places right of the decimal.

Few people remember this, but when the astronauts went to the Moon, there was concern that they would sink in the dust that had accumulated on the surface of the Moon over the billions of years it had sat there.  "Scientists" did all these calculations and came up with the idea that there should be at least a couple of feet of powder on the surface.  Well, guess what?  There was only inches, meaning the Moon was either far younger than anyone thought, or some other force had been in play.

Another interesting tid-bit...when the US and USSR were fighting to be the first to get to the Moon, both sides kept missing.  Their toys either flew off into the Great Unknown, or they smacked into the Moon.  Now, orbital dynamics were pretty well established by Isaac Newton.  In fact, Newton could have orbited the Moon if rocketry had been advanced enough.  So why did all that hardware keep missing?

Werner von Braun let that cat out of the bag in an interview with Life Magazine.  He told us that the Moon's center of gravity was not at the center of the Moon, but quite a bit further out, meaning that the Moon's gravity well started about 5,000 miles sooner than anyone expected.  That can play hell with your trans-orbital insertions, bub.  Interestingly, about two weeks after von Braun let that out, he was 'retired' and all the toys on both sides started getting to the Moon with no problem.  Hmmm...

There's plenty more: transient gas releases from certain craters, water vapor clouds floating around, magnetized rocks on a planet with no magnetic field.  The list goes on.  And here's the problem...none of these things fit any of the theories, or can be explained by any 'natural' means, at least that 'scientists' are willing to entertain at the moment.

The Moon is, in fact, one of the greatest mysteries in physics, astronomy and chemistry.  There's a lot of posturing by 'scientists,' like they've got it all sussed, but in fact they don't have a clue.  The Moon is nothing like the Earth in composition, is much older than Earth by any measurements we have taken, and has characteristics that don't match any other natural phenomenon we have observed to date.  It shouldn't exist is about all anyone can truly conclude, if they are honest and weight the facts, not their personal pipe dreams or the paradigm currently being paid for by grants from the National Science Foundation.

Not to mention that something about the Moon scared the hell out of NASA, and they haven't been back in 40 years.  Don't believe a word of all that 'budget' crap.  For what they've spent on space stations and shuttles and interplanetary robots, they could've built a small city on the Moon with regular tourist runs each month.  Hell, it's only three days away by 60s technology, using computing power that didn't come close to your smart phone today.

The conspiracy theory is not the facts that I have laid out.  NASA has published the information, though they hide it pretty well.  The conspiracy is the truth about the Moon and why humans haven't been back there in 40 years.

It's a great puzzle, a real mystery, in our own back yard.  Some of the greatest minds in history have stubbed their toes on it, and the honest ones have admitted it.  It literally stares us in the face every night, and yet almost no one in the 'establishment' will touch it.  They'd rather send an endless series of rock-sniffing golf carts to Mars and call it a major step in science, than deal with the real head-scratcher slapping us upside the head.

Ain't it about time we started getting some real science, and real answers, for all those billions of dollars we keep shooting into space?  If not, then can't we put that money to better use down here?

Running Around In [Crop] Circles

About a month ago, Indonesia got its very first home-grown crop circle. It's located near Yogyakarta, not far from Mount Merapi, recently famous for blowing its top.

The design is pretty basic, but it has raised quite a fuss, with heated discussions still underway.

There were reports of a UFO a couple of days after it appeared. A man was struck by lightning and killed when he climbed to the top of a hill to photograph it. One of the first people to see it swears that the morning dew on the tops of the rice was undisturbed. The Air Force and Nuclear Agency were called in to investigate, and both declared it 'safe.' Crowds of onlookers brought a mini-boom to the area as vendors sprang up to sell everything from bottled water to souvenirs.

Speculation falls into two camps, of course. One is the man-made/natural theory, and the other is aliens. Being highly superstitious people, both sides see omens regardless of which side of the fence they sit on.

I pointed out to anyone who cared to listen that if it is a 'real' crop circle, then the pattern will still be seen when the next crop is planted, as the plants within the affected areas will grow slightly differently. As far as any other speculation, I am squarely on the side of 'don't know.'

I do know that any sighting of UFOs since World War 2 are highly suspect. The Nazis were feverishly working on a project called Die Glocke, which involved advanced hyperdimensional physics and things like field propulsion, which if perfected, could certainly produce the flight characteristics of UFOs. Given 60 years of development by Russian and American programs, headed initially by Nazi scientists, I can easily imagine craft in use today which are far in advance of any 'public' space programs.

I have personally had three qute unusual sightings, the most recent of which was the middle of last year, and which I wrote up here on the Far Side. What I observed were quite real, and I was careful to note factht the events were very curious, I have no idea what technology generated them.

Do I believe in aliens? Well, I think Carl Sagan summed it up best in 'Contact': If there's no other life out there, then it's sure a huge waste of space. On the other hand, I have never met an alien. I have talked extensively with 'abductees,' though. I have seen the scars and felt the 'implants' and listened to the stories with an open mind, but I have heard nothing that just screamed extra-terestrial. One or two folks said they had implants removed and tested, with very unusual results, but they couldn't produce copies of the results nor could they name a doctor or lab technician with whom I could discuss the matter.

The problem is that there is entirely too much faith involved. That's one of the reasons I reject religion. They expect me to take wild stories on faith that defy any logic or reason, not the mention that the Book itself says I can get all the bennies for free, so why pay someone to go middleman for me?

The metaphor I used not too long ago was, I KNOW the sky is blue. I know WHY the sky is blue. I know that, given the physics, it can only BE blue. Now you want me to take on faith that it's green, and deny what reason and empiricism tell me is true?

Generally, people think they have me cornered when I say that I have strong reason to think there are ruins and artifacts throughout the Solar System of some previous, advanced civilization. So I MUST believe in aliens. Why? One doesn't follow the other necessarily. Nor does it require any faith.

I can look at and analyze photos with my own eyes, applying my own tools and techniques as a professional. I can duplicate calculations and observations and critically examine arguments. I can SEE buildings and structures. I can DEDUCE non-geological features. I can OBSERVE phenomena for myself. None of it REQUIRES aliens at all. It can all be explained through very human means, even if it requires radically changing our perspectives. Without conclusive evidence of alien presence on or around Earth, I am prone to think that humans themselves are capable of creating, or having created at sone time in the past, the very technology that can create UFOs and crop circles and archologies on other planets within our Solar System.

The work of some top-flight minds using empirical evidence leads to some amazing, though not necessarily alien conclusions.

Back to the topic of crop circles, I can envision certain geo-magnetic processes that could produce such formations. I can envision certain advanced technologies, albeit secret, that could do the same thing.

None of the crop circles I have looked at show anything uniquely 'alien.' The designs, methodology and even the interpretations all have decidedly Earth-bound connections. I do think that a lot of them are not formed by a bunch of drunk collage kids with ropes and boards, but do involve someone showing off some hi-tech toys that are currently in orbit around the Earth. Perhaps they are test-runs, along with things like the Norway Spiral and its cousin, the China Spiral, for Project Blue Beam.

I have seen chemtrails and I know for a fact they are nothing like contrails. I have seen UFOs and I know for a fact they are not 'open' technology. I have studied crop circles and I know they show nothing that is distinctly 'alien.' I have spent years studying photos from spacecraft and I am convinced that archologies exist on other planets and moons in our Solar System.

I am not, however, convinced that any of it proves the presence of 'alien' species in or around Earth. Logic demands that we take the least-speculative approach to unexplained phenomena.

However, consider this an open invitation to any alien species reading this blog: if your intentions are peaceful, then you are welcome to hang out at my place anytime and discuss the merits of hyperdimensional versus relativistic physics.

I'll keep the light on for you.