Knaw? being a wishy washy
"Wind Bird"; Ox; Aquarian; "Wind Bird"; ?
thats
Mayan ...Chineese.Eastern.Mayan..& I know not what
could be that Know not goes Left Not Right
{in fact probably} Aquarinsare just washy. swapping back an forth one day Con next moment PR.0

1:i do want to do a second preprep on this thread at
2:this time. And my point heres this. Because it's
3:actually an ASTRONOMICAL question, and not an
4:Astrological one {like for example
5:[ was Earth square Sun]} but the Question would
6:have to have been when was Sunrise at that Elevation!
7:in the prior chapter (4Days) it say the module was at
8:an angle of four and a half degress. but not whitch way?
9:thus my opinions already set, the Photos do show an Angle!
[1] vote for Con

Okay, sit back folks. Here's the scoop:

The talk was about an hour and a half long, and was him lecturing for half an hour, a half hour slide show, then him talking again. When he was introduced, my heart sank: he has given this talk 500 times. I knew then that any comment I made he would have heard a dozen times before, and would know how to deal with it.

The crowd had a few True Believers in it, a few students from the physics department where I work, and a representative "normal" crowd. There were perhaps 50-70 people there.

The talk itself was really quite dull. Instead of pictures and videos of objects, he had slides of government documents with names blacked out. The slide show was accompanied by a taped voiceover he had done, replete with eerie music (he used various themes from the "Close Encounters" soundtrack). He had lots of crude drawings from eyewitnesses, which drew chuckles from the crowd because it was so, well, 1970s. We're talking shaky line drawings of circles with lights, cigar-shaped outlines and the like. Nothing I hadn't seen in UFO TV shows since 1970.

He mentioned Betty and Barney Hill, as I knew he would: I found a transcript of his talk online, posted by an audience member who saw him once and taped him. I sent it to James Oberg, a noted UFO debunker, who gave me some tips.

Betty and Barney Hill are people who claim to have been abducted by aliens in the 1960s. It's a famous case; she was hypnotized and regressed to remember the incident.

During the talk Q&A, I stood up and said "Betty was interested in UFOs long before she saw the psychiatrist. That explains why she thought she was abducted. She had been talking to her husband for months before she got therapy, which would explain why his story was so similar to hers. The doctor later published, saying he did not believe she was abducted (there were a lot of social pressures on her at the time which might have started this episode), a point the speaker neglected to mention. Finally, I had read that Betty Hill was disgusted with the way UFOs were treated by the True Believer community. I inferred that she no longer believed she had been abducted.

I was astonished at what Hastings then did: he agreed with all my points, except the last one; he said Betty Hill believes she was abducted but was indeed unhappy with the way research was being done.

Let me repeat this: he agreed with me. I basically negated his whole Hill abduction story, but he said I was right, but he somehow spun it to make it seem like he was the one who was right. He constructed his sentences in such a way that it was difficult to follow his point, and then when he was done he would immediately go to the next questioner, not giving the first questioner time to rebut. After he answered my question, I knew that to a non-skeptical audience member who wasn't paying close attention, it looked like he showed just how I was wrong. In fact, he did nothing of the sort.

His tactics were clear. This guy would say mutually contradictory things two in a row throughout the whole talk, but couch what he was saying in such a confusing way that it could be difficult to follow him. You are left with the feeling (if you are not too skeptical) that he knows what he's talking about.

My friends were all laughing after the talk. I was disappointed that my question was handled in such a way that it made him seem right while I was wrong, but like I said, I knew that the Q&A wouldn't go well since he had so much experience. I have never talked to a UFO person before, so honestly I was out of my league, I wish James Oberg had been there though.

Incidentally, I got a rebuttal to my editorial in the student newspaper. A student frothed about how unfair I was, not giving any specific examples of why UFOs aren't real. The guy completely missed my point: I wasn't trying to debunk anything specific. Quite the opposite; I was trying to debunk UFOs in a general way, to get people thinking about how the "evidence" is presented, and to question the research methods. It would take volumes (literally) to debunk UFO specifics, but it isn't necessary, as I saw during the talk. You just have to listen to the way the stuff is presented.

The kicker: the editorial rebuttal was written by an anthropology student. I fear for the future of science sometimes. :wink:

edited for spelling/typos

Too bad about you anthropology student. That means some poor professor is going to have to read some drivel on the primative tribe and the dog star.
If poor professor comes to you for sympathy, buy him a drink and send me the bill.
Lisa

About the talk:
You said you're friends were laughing, but how was the audience? Was it mostly students? How did they respond? Were they enthralled? Will this fool be invited back? If he is, are you open to a few suggestions?
Lisa

Find Robert Hastings' school and give a talk there about about how UFO speakers scam their audiences.

I see that the BA had the misfortune of talking to a natural born politician. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
They'll twist everyone's words around - starting with their own -, until they get to the point where they aren't really saying anything, *but* they do it so well that no one notices it.

I don't understand how that kid could accuse the BA of being unfair, since it looks like he was hardly even allowed to speak!

He sounds to me more like a performer than someone who actually believes in what he's saying. What he's saying might be true or might not; he doesn't care, he doesn't even care if it makes sense, he just tries to give the overall impression that he's right.

Well, that's my impression.

<a name="20020303.8:13"> page 20020303.8:13 aka Po
On 2002-03-03 08:22, informant wrote: T0: 10 IX 12 KAYAB
I see that the BA had the misfortune of talking to a natural born politician.
/ this space [i] [i]
: available : | / | for
: for paid : Write ||\ //|| Governor
: political : in || \// || of
: advertizement : || / || Oregon
: Ver March 1, 2002 : [i] II [i] *
well there are not enough lines for this {U get the drift}

I haven't seen many professional speakers, but if he's done it 500 times, as the BA says, he's going to be good. So at $1700 a pop he's made (about) $850,000 dollars from a piece of poor merchandise even in the world of UFOlogy. Makes that ole snake oil look like good value, don't it?

__________________
Up the Imps!

I say don't be too harsh on people like that anthro student. The average person going to this kind of thing is just trying to discover what's up.

I know this from personal experience. When I was in University, I was a real UFO/NewAge/Psychic mystery geek. I was curious about palmistry/ESP/spirit contact, you name it. Of course I was also interested in real science as well. I believed they could co-exsist and that science as a method either hadn't found the right connections yet, or was unable to detect such subjective phenomena.

For me personally, it took a lot of growing up to change my mind about most of it. Unfortunately it's also cost me a lot of my positive, hopeful faith in life and the universe. In short, I grew cynical, I just don't believe in things the way I used to.

So I say, give 'em a chance to discover what's up on their own. A lot of these people are just trying to find their own answers. They will either come around eventually, or they will generally integrate such things into their lives.

I think it's great that a lot of people are out there questioning the world. By all means, fight for the truth, but don't criticize people too much for what they think now.

Sorry, I'm rambling. I'll probably regret posting this, but what the heck. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

I'm reminded of the famous Einstein quote: "Subtle is the Lord; malicious, he is not." As most members of this board are scientists, either professional or amateur, we know that nature is incredibly complex and rich, but never deceptive or disengenious. Unfortunately, this does not extend to people.

Psuedoscientists like Hastings or Gish are very deceptive and disengenious and are very good at it. The average scientist, perhaps naive about the ethics of these psuedoscientist, is not good at it. In graduate school, one is not required to take classes in debating psuedoscientists and frauds.

In this situation, it sounds like there was not an official moderated Q & A. The debunkers best weapon is the facts, and if Hastings is in control, he'll never let you pin him down.

Another fellow in the Hastings category is Stanton Friedman. His website is here: http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/sfhome.html

Many years ago while I was a high school student, I attended one of his UFO lectures. I recall that he didn't show any pictures either, and on that occasion the gist of his talk was that aliens are living among us right now, and that they can look just like us. (This solves a lot of problems if they want to get a library card, drivers license, etc...) I must admit that at the time, as an average American teenager, I was pretty convinced that I was probably an alien myself. At least I felt like one.

Later I discovered Carl Sagan's books and the Cosmos series, and learned to love the excitement in trying to discover what the real universe is like. (I could still enjoy fiction like Star Trek too.) [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Chip on 2002-03-05 02:55 ]</font>

I attended the UFO talk that Thursday at Sonoma State University. I sat with Phil "The Bad Astronomer" and the SSU physics students in the front portion of the lecture room. Phil was right next to the wall but we all talked about what this guy might say or present to the students.

It was interesting to see that a great deal of people attending the talk were older folks paying to see this man present "proof". I had to pay to get in because I forgot my university ID card in the rush to get there in time. I felt so guilty paying to hear this chump speak.

The best part came after the talk when Phil, a few physics students, and I started an improptu discussion on pseudoscince.

Phil actually had a few people come up to him after the talk to hear more about what he had to say. It was neat because people started to congrigate around him as he told us his thoughts on the talk and other matters. I guess word got around that there was an astronmer in the house.

__________________
Marcus Asaro

"I'm not normally a praying man, but if you're up there, save me Superman!" - Homer Simpson.

Good points. Here's a nice link about how-to-debate such people (example being Gish)...
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/debating/gish.html

That's a good website. I read some things about Duane Gish awhile back. The popular skeptic Michael Shermer debated him and if I recall correctly it was in his book "Why People Believe Weird Things" that he wrote about preparing for and debating Gish. The book is quick and fun read and full of critical analysis of extraordinary claims. After reading that section on Gish, you can get a sense of how he, Hastings and others operate.

__________________
Marcus Asaro

"I'm not normally a praying man, but if you're up there, save me Superman!" - Homer Simpson.