Those links sure ring a bell. I remember first seeing them here. :-k

Interesting coincidence--when I was playing with the ionic wind 'lifters' from the misnamed American Anti-Gravity site, I made a small disc, much like the one illustrated in that article. I used an airfoil silhouette, and rotated it through 360 degrees to contour the 'rotated wing' shape, put the anode top center, and wrapped the foil cathode around the equatorial 'base,' and it created a small force (I'm still not sure if that was because of the reaction force of accelerating the air downward, or because the ionic wind over the curved surface produced a pressure drop on the top). It looked really cool too--the violet halo of ionized nitrogen enveloped the whole disc, lending a very otherworldly look to the little contraption ;)

I haven't read the second link yet, I'll get back to you later on that...

If there were anything substantial and/or unrefutable proof, obviously this discussion would not be taking place. I still maintain that either they are all lying/or are delusional, or there is something to be investigated. I see no other possibility.

I appreciate your honesty, and will gladly address the other points in your reply -- before doing so though, you've touched on here what I'm most curious about, and I think it's important to establish before moving forward. What specifically leads you to this conclusion, and would you be willing to elaborate? Was your personal experience instrumental in adopting this stance? (And if I may ask, how old were you at the time?)

Please know that I'm not trying to be confrontaional, rather, trying to better understand where you're coming from and reconcile the difference in appearance between your above statement and this from earlier:

In a nutshell, why do UFO claims constitute a "phenomenon" or "phenomena?"

I'd consider other possibilities somewhere in the middle, otherwise this conclusion runs the risk of presenting a false dilemma. It's possible, yes, but I don't think three options are enough, since there are numerous psychological processes at work. (Not limited specifically to these...Example 1, Example 2, Example 3.)

You make some good points, but my question is did you read the Disclosure book? Most of the incidents can not be covered by the above mentioned links. These are also persons who will testify before congress.

I've viewed all materials pertaining to TDP that're available at no cost (including those long since removed). If the evidence they claim to possess is so conclusive that it "proves that UFOs are real, that some are of extraterrestrial origin," etc., why must I purchase the book or donate a minimum of $5 just to view more claims, stating they'll only present the complete materials in open Congressional hearings? If these bits are so compelling, as per prior commentary, why do they refuse to present their "full case" to the scientific community? Why do they even need the public to purchase merchandise?

Sure, they state they'll testify before Congress. In what way does that substantiate their claims?

Isn't the penalty for purjuring testimony before Senate and Congress quite severe? I guess I always figured that if you tried to pull the wool over official eyes, you'd likely do time, or at least pay a hefty fine.

I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t affect the way I think. In fact, it’s inspired an extensive effort into the study of a wide range of sciences, and a sense of wonder regarding the cosmos in general—and those are not bad things. And I relate to the reports of credible witnesses of similar events, naturally, and to the frustration they sometimes feel that they cannot convey their experience to others, so that explanations can be considered and evaluated more effectively.

I wish I had had a high resolution videocamera and a tripod that day, so I could link to it right here and instead of debating the fallacy of memory, we could quickly eliminate the usual host of explanations, most of which fail instantly. Unusual secret aircraft, some unknown form of holographic projection, or some as yet unidentified form of atmospheric phenomenon would be the only remaining ‘conventional’ explanations, and I think that if you could see it as I did, all of those would be seriously subject to question.

I’ll recap the event, and ask only for some small degree of mercy with your reply. I was at the bottom of my home street on a bright, nearly perfectly clear mid-afternoon day, with five of my neighbors, ranging from the age of seven to twelve. I was eight at the time. Perhaps I should add that I was never prone to confabulation—never had any imaginary friends or such, and even then was an adamant naturalist, scholastically noted for a strong talent in science, which earned me a place in the gifted class the following year. We were all discussing what we might do together that day, when my neighbor Bryce, who was twelve, asked what that was in the sky to my left. It was immediately riveting—there was a pair of bright white lights in the sky, one above and to the left of the other, moving fast and zig-zagging in rapid succession within a region covering about 30 degrees of the sky. They maintained their formation as they executed each manouver, and displayed no sign of velocity change. It was like watching a rubber ball reflect off a wall, they way they moved. We talked about it while it was happening, but we didn’t take our eyes off of the sight because they were moving fast enough that if we looked away, we might lose them if they continued off in any given direction. One kid, who was nine, suggested they might be jets. No, jets don’t move like that. Helicopters, no, too fast—we went down the list as we watched until we could only ask the question and offer no answers. It lasted for about a minute, maybe a little longer, then the lights went in front of the Sun, which was about 20 degrees off to the right, and as I stared, I couldn’t see them return from that area, and we all lost sight of them, rubbed our tearing eyes, and excitedly discussed the possibility that we had just witnessed a pair of “ufo’s.” I even ran up the street to my house to get the Polaroid camera, only to discover that it was out of film. I looked again but they were gone.

The experience has certainly influenced my attitude in this matter, as it has many others who have witnessed events like this that they cannot explain. I eventually came to think in more open terms about what happened, and now I think the right answer is that I just don’t know. However, some footage that I’ve seen of unidentified objects darting about in the sky, demonstrates the same kind of erratic flight characteristics of the lights I saw, as nothing ‘conventional’ ever has. Even searchlights, which are a form of projection, follow curves—the mass of the light itself is apparent in the motion of the light it traces on clouds. And of course, there were no clouds in that region of sky to project onto anyway. The fact remains, in my mind anyway, that nothing offered by the science of today, follows this kind of erractic, linear, zig-zag pattern in the sky.

Which leaves a big fat question that continues to provoke my thoughts nearly thirty years later. It’s an itch you just can’t scratch, dang.

Strange…I don’t see the conflict between those statements. I may not know what I saw that day, or what other people have seen that follows a similar movement dynamic, but I don’t mind speculating about it. Because until I know what it probably was, all possibilities remain open to question.

Personally, I can only say this—until someone shows me something that fits reasonably well with what I saw, this kind of observation remains in a class by itself. If tomorrow someone posts a link to footage of some crazy kind of dual-flare or something, that can zig-zag around in the sky like that, but only now after thirty years of military classification can be revealed, I’ll be able to close the book on a question that has captivated me for most of my life…and I will smile and be relieved, and save countless hours of my nights up thinking and wondering about what it could have been. But as it stands, nothing to my knowledge can explain it.

The topic of interstellar strategy is interesting, but perhaps a bit off topic; but this topic is wandering all over the place, so perhaps that is not so bad in this case.

Yes, the super-ark strategy does have the advantage of arriving at a solar system with massive resources, rather than with practically nothing; To use an ecological simile, in some ways it is the difference between a fern spore arriving in a patch of mud, and an acorn. The fern spores spread more quickly in the wind, and colonise an area first; but the more massive acorns arrive with enough stored energy to start making a tree. Eventually the natural ecological succession leads to a forest of oak trees.

Just laziness on my part. I was using 'cloning' as a shorthand for the strategy of sending genetic information rather than live, or frozen humans. In fact you might not even need to send DNA; just send the recipe and the all-important sequencing information for the various base pairs to construct the required chromosomes; create a new set of zygotes, raise them to term in artificial wombs, then to adulthood in a robot creche (also assembled from a recipe stored on a relatively small hard drive). This information intense strategy would allow the establishment of a human colony (complete with human genetic material and an arbitary amount of transferred cultural information) in a remote planetary system while only requiring a relatively small, unmanned interstellar craft to be built.As it happens cloning per se has very little to do with this strategy; you would only need to clone if you wanted multiple copies of a particularly useful genotype; most of the rest of the population could be naturally diverse, thanks to in-vitro fertilisation. In fact if the genetic information is stored digitally then new individuals could be created by iteration of the database without any need for that tricky meiosis stuff....Well, here we are in total agreement; a high tech strategy such as the one I have outlined doesn't need to involve the local fauna at all; and mutilation to obtain genetic information is patently not necessary (nor are probing or any of the other aspects of so-called abduction experiences. Those are simply delusions).
I was not attempting to support the ridiculous ET/cloning theories; simply pointing out that when and if we attempt to spread out into the galaxy, genetic dissemination may have advantages over generation ships.

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Again my question: are they liars?

A person who is not telling the truth is not necessarily a liar; they may be mistaken or simply stating their opinion. (of course a person who is stating their opinion is telling the truth, in that respect; but their opinion may be wrong).
A lot of the Disclosure project seems to be concerned with uncovering the fact that various governmental bodies take the UFO phenomenon seriously, and that disinformation strategy has been used at various times; this should not be a surprise to anyone.

That does not mean that the ET hypothesis has any more weight than before.

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I agree completely. However, I do maintian that the onus for submitting convincing data rests in the hands of the UFOers. At the very least, they need to police themselves better. Like I said before, aliens are not a cottage industry. It shouldn't be very hard for them to come up with thefunds to do some serious research. People have done more with less.

John

The problem I see is that many of these UFO organizations begin with the belief that UFOs are ET space craft. They then conduct their "investigations" with this prejudice (sort of like Hoagland and Cydonia). Not very scientific.

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An open mind is like an open window...without a good screen you'll get all sorts of weird bugs!

True, but I did happen to read the book, and the incidents are pretty precise. It does not read like fuzzy memories or opinions. Many assertions are pretty astonishing. It is not only about coverups. It is about concrete incidents, most of the time personally witnessed. Therefore the witnesses must be lying/and or delusional. But you really need to read the book to make a statement regarding the type of testimony.

You keep presenting this, and again, it reeks of a false dichotomy. You might be correct, but IMHO it's far too narrow in scope. Some of the panel members may be lying, some may be delusional -- but what's contained in the book? Claims, testimony, and purported first-hand accounts, yes? How are you able to conclusively determine from those alone if the situation only boils down to those options?

I do find it interesting when ardent UFO advocates take issue with others in the same camp, as Kevin Randle has apparently done regarding Greer et al, here. His assessment may or may not be right about Clifford Stone (and others), but I'm not sure whether or not I have the investigative means/resources to find out. Objectively, I must place the caveat upon Randle's assessment, given that despite the late Frank Kaufman having been exposed as a fraud (pertaining to his Roswell claims which I detailed in the same prior post), Randle doesn't appear willing to dismiss the subject.

Further, I highly recommend reading this commentary by James Oberg, which may assist in offering further perspective.