Bart, I would be more inclined to have a “wait and see” attitude if you could provide me with only a couple of very good cases of Americans who have been “abducted”. But when you say 4 million have been abducted, that’s like saying 4 million Americans all saw the same “miracle” (which 296,000,000 Americans failed to notice), or 4 million Americans have suddenly disappeared. 1 out of every 75 Americans having been “abducted” is just too many, especially since I’ve met very many thousands of Americans who have never been abducted. According to you, 1 out of every 75 people I have seen and met and talked to in my lifetime should have been “abducted”.

By the way, I saw the docu-drama on TV titled “Fire in the Sky”. That is a great sci-fi movie. I read about that story when it was in the news back in the ‘80s.

One time, quite by chance, I found myself driving at night near Snowflake, Arizona, which is a very remote place. All of a sudden that story came back to me. Yikes!! But I survived without being “abducted”.

Another explanation for what happened to those guys was that they were maybe smoking pot or even taking acid. That is a far more logical explanation than one of them actually being “abducted”. I’ve lived in cities where more than 1 out of every 75 people I knew smoked pot or took acid. None of them had ever been abducted, although a couple of them claimed to have flown in space on their own.

However no matter what approach I take to stimulate thought provoking ideas on possibilities, Jay rides herd on any thoughts that get outside the box. Life must be difficult under the shadow of such a powerful personality.

Poisoning the well.

You're taking whatever approach you think will get to your predetermined conclusions. And you don't seem to care that all of them have failed for clear logical or factual reasons.

You're not talking about "ideas" or "possibilities." You're trying to tell us all we're "sticking our heads in the sand" by not being as gullible as you about UFO issues.

All of you totally missed the point of my clearly cicuitous word salid.

You tried once again to throw words back at us without understanding what they mean. You're just trying to "win" (or at least appear that way to some).

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

"experinced observations of pilots ", "debunking tactics", "experianced air crew", "The science community, in my opinion, is in denial that the phenomena even exists at all", "the phenomena is real is undeniable", "sleep paralyses is not a good explenation", "It was a structured craft. ". Etc. etc.

You can not debunk something if there is no bunk. Unfortunately, UFOlogy is full of a lot of bunk.

Any source reference I cited was quickly impuned as to motive.

You lied about the qualifications and conclusions of your source. I caught you in the lie.

It was pointed out that only physical evidence accepted when all know that eyewitness accounts and researchers integrety is the evidence offered.

Your source admits that prima facie evidence did not exist for her conclusion. That immediately makes it scientifically untenable. Yet she persisted in that conclusion without examining any other possible cause. And got paid for it.

That was when you accused us of "sticking our heads in the sand," rather than to believe her. When all your researchers were revealed for the charlatans they were, that's when you backpedalled and tried to weasel out of any responsibility by saying you were only repeating others' claims.

These are all standerd debunking tactics that I am rather inexperianced at dealing with.

Contradiction. You are either familiar enough with them to recognize them as standard, or you're not. These are "standard" techniques only in the sense that the errors in reasoning you are making have been known and written about since Aristotle.

My inexperiance with the subject was obvious as I was undertaking this as a journey of personal discovery.

You revealed that voluntarily at a strategically advantageous time: your reasoning had been soundly refuted and you had to admit you had limited understanding of science, so you changed horses and made it seem in retrospect that everyone was picking on you for having seen a UFO.

Open and serious debate considering the posibilities and implecations of were rendered mute.

Only after you lost the debate.

Anyone incapable of recognizing the bias to the subject and the meathodology used to debunk is wearing blinders.

"Agree with me or else!"

Most of it was centered around my weaknesses at debate and not the merits of the issue itself.

The debate was around your inability to provide and correctly represent the merits of the issue, yet your demand that it be taken seriously anyway. You want the discussion to go in your preplanned direction, the way most UFO discussions with skeptics go. You aren't prepared for the direction in which they're actually taken, and the speed with which people catch your straw-man arguments and hype. So now you're frustrated. Understandable, but unacceptable.

You plan to "win" with stupid debate tricks and now you're frustrated that it didn't work here as well as it did on the other forums you posted at about the alleged spaceship on the Moon before coming here.

You refer to UFO catch phrases when I am not even aware of what they are.

Or so you say.

I am not CT nut or a forum troll but someone really looking for answers because I have legitimate questions.

Utter hogwash. You were given answers. You didn't like them, so you called everyone names for pointing out what was wrong with your preconceptions. You've used the same rhetorical approach four times with little modification.

Your approach is entirely inconsistent with people looking for answers. It is entirely consistent with someone pushing his own preconceived ideas. You go from forum to forum with the same martyr tactics every time people catch you.

Tired of your pointed questions with their thinly veiled agenda and will respond to them no more.

You don't answer any of my questions anyway.

Is this another threat to go away (the fifth in turn)? Will you be back in a day or so to make sure everyone knows you're leaving?

Spare us the drama. You know what evidence science expects.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Gee, that phrase sounded so odd, that I did a bit to look it up.

So; you are tired of questions "aimed to get to the real truth" while you are trying to get to the real truth?

And, revealing the real truth is an agenda?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

I just want to share a word image with the valiant soldiers: fighting a dough ball.

Google seems unfamiliar with the phrase (but its spidery agents will soon report this instance back to home base, for all the world to enjoy). I heard it applied to trying to change a large institution: you push here, and it pops out over there. You can wear yourself out and in the end the dough ball is still a dough ball.

I've never so much witnessed the doughball effect in a single individual, as demonstrated here. It takes a special skill for one to present so many different faces, to appear to be so unresisting, yielding, yet refusing any real change. It's awesome to behold this special glutinous power.

Hang in there, lovers of reality. Keep asking for the evidence. And, be careful. Don't let the dough ball exhaust you -- or smother you.

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Perhaps you mean tarball? Probably a polically correct form of tarbaby. Tarbaby-tarball-doughball. At any rate, I get the jist though I fear this one will be wiped from our lexicon, for no reason really. I fear such subtle terms may be lost to the ages once the likes of me are gone from this planet.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

Have I asked the "what would convince you you're wrong?" question?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Have I asked the "what would convince you you're wrong?" question?

I'm sure you have. When you prod the dough ball in that fashion, the lobe that emerges in response reads, "I'm not making any arguments; I'm just trying to find answers to my questions that are part of my personal journey."

When you mash on that lobe by pointing out that the questions he proposes to answer by UFOs, alien abduction, and government-intelligentsia coverup are better answered by intrinsic factors, the dough-ball lobe you let go of to do that mashing springs back out and says, "You're all in denial if you can't see that this is a real phenomenon that science is ignoring."

Let's hear it for Binary Man.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Does't work for me. Tarballs -- more common usages: neither the Unix kind, nor the ones floating at sea -- aren't it. Tar babies (Wikipedia) are sticky and cling to you, become yours if touched, are defeated just by detaching.

Dough balls, properly floured of course, are just soft, essentially unalterable blobs, that just wear you out by taking different shapes, but not really changing.

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Luckily, if you keep prodding a good doughball, fold it over a couple of times, and prod it some more, you'll end up with a great pizza crust

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

I really did mean to compliment 01101001 on his extremely literary usage of the word "glutinous."

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I don't do youtube and such except for pure musical entertainment.


Have you read anything about critical thinking and logical fallacies?

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Olsen the moderator.

Hmmm...Jaimie Maussan.

http://www.ufowatchdog.com/hall4.html

Personally, I don't put much weight on a guy that peddles videos of the planet Venus during a solar eclipse as a record of UFOs. Any claims made by Maussan about analyzing the tape for hoaxes just has zero credibility based on his track record. To me the UFO looks like a lamp post.


Royce Myers hit it on the head:

clowns belong in the circus, not doing investigations

Bart, give us a reason why we should spend time looking at your latest and discussing it with you? You know what our reaction is likely to be, and you don't like it. Why, frankly, do you continue to post here?

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Hey, another member of the doughball committee has shown up! Has to be a new one, since all the others said they were leaving permanently.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Hey Bart,

Save us all the trouble and tell us that we're close-minded gov't shills right up front.

Don't forget to say that you have formed no opinion, but are looking for answers from open-minded members of the scientific community.

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Olsen the moderator.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=baa_1194994414

Does this guy look like he aint wrapped too tight?
No matter what, they just won't go away.
Yes, I know what your conclusion will be.

I really will quit bothering you now.
You guys don't get the bee in my bonnet. My education was in engineering, job experiance in electronics designs, sign mfg, video production, graphic arts and advertising. Science has been a major part of my life and it is to science I have always turned for answers. People I trust tell me fantastic things. Saw something myself.

For the first time in my life I look to science for an answer and find failure. It is just difficult to find what I have always placed my trust in as somehow inadiquate to the task.

I tried ignoring this myself for a long time. Maybe I just have too much time on my hands since retiring. There is a lot of hoax and mis interpretation. But there is something real at work here as well, and much of it just makes no sense.

Not big into CT and do not acuse you of being gov shills. Just know that defense has to consider everything or risk getting surprised. Know that they classify much just to keep from looking silly for being required to consider all possibilities. Looked into remote viewing just because the Russians were during the cold war, for example.

It would be remiss of them to not consider the implecations of this, so therfore I know they have. There is something going on here, just don't know what exactly it is.

You might not think so from some of my posts, but I'm pretty good at solving problems and finding answers. Just frustrated at not finding an answer that covers all the issues.

I realize what all your answers are before I ask the questions. No hard feelings about it either. If I needed an engineering solution for an aircraft I would consult you. On this I will have to look elsewhere.

Sincirely appreciate what I have learned here.
Just wanted to let you know I wasn't going away with a chip on my shoulder.

regards

There you go again.

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

I really will quit bothering you now.

Go or stay. Just quit saying one thing and doing another. It smacks of drama, and we can do without that.

For the first time in my life I look to science for an answer and find failure.

The problem is that you're not looking to science. You're looking at the caricature of science you've drawn as the straw-man you're going to disembowel in order to maintain the comfort in believing you saw something fantastic. What you think science is or should be is nothing like what it is. You've been given references to some of the best writings on the subject. I will also add Popper's Conjectures and Refutations.

Not big into CT and do not acuse you of being gov shills.

Thanks, but heard that before. What will you say tomorrow? You can't seem to make up your mind from day to day. One day I'm on your good side and the other I'm your worst enemy. Your inconsistent approach is irritating.

You might not think so from some of my posts, but I'm pretty good at solving problems and finding answers.

That doesn't matter to me if you're not willing or able to display that skill here.

Just frustrated at not finding an answer that covers all the issues.

The problem is that along with "all the issues" you include the unfounded claims of fringe theorists as if they were fact. You're trying to solve the problem the way they want it solved, which results in a quandary because that's what they want to happen. Answers don't get them appearance fees and attention; only continued controversy. Hence their approach is meant to perpetuate controversy, not determine answers.

I realize what all your answers are before I ask the questions. No hard feelings about it either.

What do you mean? You recently subjected us to a long harangue about how inadequate my and others' answers have been and how malevolent we are for proposing them. Sorry, you don't get to ask questions to solicit the answers you expect, then sound off about how inappropriate they are, then tell people you're not a troll.

If I needed an engineering solution for an aircraft I would consult you. On this I will have to look elsewhere.

The problem with that attitude is the failure to realize that the same rules of physical law and investigative method apply. Other places will make you feel better. But few places will get you closer to the truth. You will have to choose.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

You have been tutored by the best of the best for days now. Do you realize how much time Jay and others have spent trying to make you understand the logic behind scientific meathod? What exactly would satisfy you? What would they have to say to you to make you happy? As an interested uninformed observer I have completely lost track of what your purpose might be here. I will make a prediction: whereever you go, you will never again find a more informed group of people who are willing to spend half the time these guys did, educating you. Good luck Bart--joe

I'm really curious what that would be.

__________________
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

In this case, one has to consider the source of the video. While a great deal of UFO reports are simple misperceptions, many photographs/videos are known or suspected hoaxes. Allan Hendry wrote:

I noted earlier in examining the conclusions of the 1,307 UFO reports that hoaxes did not figure at all into the scheme of things--rather misperceptions of some existing stimulus were responsible. This situation is not the case, however, when it comes to cases involving photographs, where a significant population of deliberate fraud exists. The failure of photographs to serve as impersonal proof of the existence of UFOs up to now lay largely in the ease of fabricating fake photos of small models that couldn't be distinguished from the real thing.

The instant I saw Maussan linked to this video, alarm bells began ringing. You have to consider the source in these cases.


Another UFO catch phrase. The thing that is real is that people misidentify ordinary (and sometimes unusual) phenomena for something extraordinary. Until it can be shown that people can not make such mistakes, the UFO phenomena will be mired in "but it could have been a structured craft of unknown origin/alien spaceship and not just a star/planet/fireball/balloon/etc." and "the witness was too experienced to make such an obvious error in perception".

I have to say, I don't understand why people expect one explanation to cover everything. What's wrong with having Venus and other natural things explain a lot of sightings and having manmade craft explain the others?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

That's too easy. They propose that they are Alien Spaceships, that's one cause. Obviously i fyou propose a number of causes for a number of different sightings you don't know what they were so by default you lose.

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You have to consider the source in these cases.

Unfortunately in Bart5050's world. "considering the source" equates to an unfair personal attack on the promoter. Apparently unless one has murdered a busload of nuns, his personal integrity must be considered above reproach and therefore his testimony impeccable.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

BEGGING THE QUESTION . . . ? (oh, sorry Jay, I just always wanted to say that-j)

Not to mention their infallibility. And they are NOT straw men, however often you say it, they are Real People!

__________________
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

If the Lowell observatory personnel photographed this object with many others witnessing the event or it was photographed by numerous people over a major city (from different locations), I would consider the source fairly reliable and it worthy of examining. However, when Joe Texas videotapes an object hovering in the air that looks like a light fixture from his backyard and then immediately contacts Jaimie Maussan (again, look at the hall of shame entry) to investigate the case (and not a university or observatory), the alarm bells just start ringing. This is what I mean about considering the source.