Great, now I’m a ‘uofist’ because I told my story, lovely. I said that some fraction of the reported naked eye sightings are likely to offer ‘something of interest,’ which includes natural and ‘unnatural’ phenomena. Some of those may turn out to be alien craft. If some are, I would think six or less per year. See? No contradiction, though I admit it’s all totally speculative, as is the topic, but that's one of the reasons it’s so fun.

Like I said, I think that if some sightings really are extraordinary craft (or even some kind of holographic projection, who knows?), they’re not common. And even if one is sighted professionally, chances are it’ll be a smudgy photo at best. I think most observations are indeed failures to identify conventional events, others are more interesting, and some may be more than just ‘interesting.’

That doesn’t hold water—first of all, astronomers aren’t looking for fast objects in the atmosphere, and presumably, much faster ones nearby. And there aren’t enough astronomers to see the whole sky—probability dictates that your random Joe looking up is more likely to witness a rare, fleeting event in the atmosphere. I would think radar technicians would be most likely to witness events like this, but if the ‘visitors’ are as smart as we would assume, and they didn’t want to be seen on radar (which is easy to detect), they could simply absorb the radar waves. I think that if ‘they’ are here, they let us see only what they want us to see.

It takes a lot more light to see something in the daytime sky, and things lights can be attached to, like wings, don’t show up well at night. Misidentifications are less likely in daytime.

‘Flight characteristics’ seems like a good place to start, it’s my first litmus test of a claim. Linear movement punctuated by either sudden stops or unusual accelerations can weed out most conventional explanations, and all of those you’ve mentioned. I have a videotape of various sightings, and some of them show objects moving extremely fast and stopping on a dime a few times, then leaping away at incredible speeds. If that footage isn’t faked, it’s –really- hard to explain with any conventional science. But that’s the point—there’s nothing unscientific about the possible visitation of aliens to Earth. It doesn’t require any violation of scientific postulates to arrive at this idea. The resistance scientists have to the possibility that this could be happening is at least as speculative as the idea that we may be under surveillance from outside intelligences. Science itself doesn’t forbid the possibility, not in any way. Whether or not it’s actually happening is a matter of opinion, not science. I’m not asking anyone to ‘believe’ that we’re being visited, and I don’t think anyone who says to ‘disbelieve’ has a leg to stand on either. Folks like those at CSICOP have it right—let’s not waste time bickering about ‘who’s right,’ let’s examine the claims that come up. Neither side has a superior position right now, so we should keep an open mind, but investigate with skepticism, and with enough analysis, we’ll figure it out.

It’s been nearly thirty years—don’t you think that if we had something that could defy the laws of inertia, we’d have some glimmer of that by now? I don’t rule it out completely, that we may have craft that could maneuver as I witnessed, but with every passing year it looks more unlikely that this is what I saw.

I understand this, but we all saw the same thing and described it the same way, and it was as shocking at the time as it is to me now. Details can be exaggerated and times and places can be forgotten sometimes, but you don’t forget or ‘rewrite’ a memory of fast zig-zagging lights moving together in the daytime sky, it sticks with you like glue. Believe you me—I’d Much rather have physical evidence for the very reasons you mentioned, but at the time, people didn’t have camera phones and video cameras on their pockets. I figure, if this phenomena wasn’t unique, there should be a significant up swell in photographic evidence over the next decade or so.

Unless someone intends to get us slowly used to the idea that they’re around, which seems to make sense. They may also want samples, no?

Oh come on—when your neighbor has a newborn, it’s old hat, and the thing has exactly –nothing- of interest to say to you, but you drop by to see the funny little critter anyway. It’s alive, and full of unknown potential, so we’re curious. Besides, if it’s evil, we want to be ready when it comes out to play with our kids!

I never said those craft were necessarily ‘manned’—I agree, it seems more likely they’d be probes. Really, really sophisticated probes, or remote controlled perhaps, but yeah, I’d rather hang out safely by the Moon and watch with a cup of coffee, than risk my butt in the airspace of a decidedly militant species. And they may have been dropping in for a long, long time now—weird depictions of aerial phenomena and even, apparently, astronauts of a sort, go back to cave-painting days.

Hey—even a few hundred years is ‘right around the corner’ on galactic timescales. There’s nothing ‘conceited’ about noting that we’ve only recently advanced into space, and will likely get much better at it pretty soon. And I don’t know if FTL travel is possible, but if they have it, they probably have a much better idea of how close we are to developing it than we do.

Your assumptions are as baseless as mine, pal—who’s to say what’s ‘convenient’ for a galactic civilization? (And I agree, planets are unstable and so immobile—better to make one with engines, and greater structural integrity. And when you want some entertainment, fly a few probes over a primitive planet and play chicken with their aircraft) Or whether another species might look askance at our flying plutonium out to Saturn and beyond, or whether they’d be concerned about the distinctive fission detonation signatures we were up to last century… ‘The devil you know,’ you know?

Indeed. I hope we’ll develop a new improved propulsion method sometime soon, and find out who, if anyone, is out there laughing at us ;P