Penn and Teller demystify alien abductions but not E.T |
A subject I’ve not written about here in great depth are UFOs and aliens. A Hmm search for “ufo” only yields 4 results. A couple months ago on the weekly live radio show I host, I talked a bit about this. It’s a topic where you can’t spend too much time on or people give you a raised eyebrow stare. A low tolerance topic. It’s one where people either believe, disbelive, or begrudgingly disbelieve or believe.
We just returned from the most alien place in the United States: the desert of Nevada where the one and only (?) Extraterrestrial Highway exists. We didn’t actually travel along the highway which runs north of Las Vegas and to the east of the Nevada Test Site [google map location pictured above]. Apparently there is a place where you can stop and eat an alien burger.
Video Keypoints [see: how to create keypoints]
[3:20] Dude making copious notes on aliens he thinks might be among a UFO convention. Yes, he is serious. And check out that he changes up his outfit on day 2 to avoid detection [18:47]
[8:37] P&T paint a sex toy silver and a woman claims it is alien in nature.
[16:11] Woman displays picture of her extraterrestrial husband. Sort of looks like half-man, half-cheetah. Rarrg!
[21:05] The Bush family come from reptillian alien bloodlines? A UFO author says yes. Hard to type while laughing.
What I believe and don’t believe when it comes to E.T
When it comes to other intelligent life, I’m a skeptical believer. I think it’s foolish to assume we are the only intelligent life out there and that some other planet somewhere doesn’t have beings with equal or superior intelligence.
I do not believe aliens are coming here and conducting secret human research using strange probes. I’m with Penn & Teller on the content and thrust of their video. Most, if not all of those people are there to exploit and earn money from selling UFO-related books and speaking gigs to vulnerable people. The people caught up in it I feel sorry for too, just listen to Penn’s thoughts at the end of the video. Some people need to believe in something. An alien being interested in them is better than nobody being interested. It’s sad, really, not funny, even though I laughed at the video keypoints above.
I do believe there is evidence in a military stronghold (Area 51 or elsewhere) somewhere that extraterrestrials have visited — and or keep visiting — earth and that the government doesn’t want the American people to know about their findings. Do I think people today would panic knowing E.Ts have visited earth? No. Some people might, but then some people panic at the sight of rain in Seattle or rush hour traffic.
The flipside is projects like SETI haven’t been successful yet and they don’t think they will be until 2020. It would seem with the massive combined computers effort that something, anything would have been found by now and yet there’s been nothing. Is it possible the government has squelched results from the SETI project from being echoed back to the participants? I’m not big on conspiracies, but that sounds unlikely even for a conspiracy theorist.
What I’d like to see is some sort of open source community movement for dealing with what’s already been discovered and is being kept secret. For military defense reasons, I doubt that will happen any time soon, but I wish the government would stop playing the finders keepers song. Have a little faith in people and their ability to reason. Sure, there are crazies out there, people who can’t handle the truth, but I believe strongly in the human condition. That man can find a way to live with the knowledge that a more superior creature exists.
Even if that means we are living among them right now.
Did this post make you go hmm?
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I just had a vision of Chris Pirillo running around Seattle and screaming, “It’s raining! It’s raining!” No offense, Chris.
As with most subjects, I am open-mindedly skeptical on the alien/UFO issue. There’s too much unknown for me to conclude anything. Who’s to say that if we met an alien life-form not biologically related to life on earth that we would even recognize it as “life”? The resemblance of people’s memory of the aliens they encountered to humanoids is one mark against the theory, IMHO. Of course, it’s possible that (a) their memory has been altered by their expectations, or (b) these aliens ARE related to us.
Comment by Sterling Camden — August 10, 2006 @ 3:31 pm PST
You had to chuckle on the picture of the reptillian Bush, Sterling, didn’t ya? lol
Comment by TDavid — August 10, 2006 @ 3:54 pm PST
Personally, I welcome our reptillian overlords.
Comment by Sterling Camden — August 10, 2006 @ 4:08 pm PST
So, you don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but you do believe there is evidence of ET life that is being kept secret (without any solid evidence), and you believe that there is other life (without any evidence), and you believe that those beings are superior (having no evidence of their existence).
Wouldn’t it be simpler to believe that our military is experimenting and testing new weapons and platforms? What better than to allow people to think up crazy ideas and wear down the interest of the general public? That would be the quintessential way to let the problem solve itself.
Comment by Dean in Des Moines — August 15, 2006 @ 10:01 am PST
I didn’t say I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, Dean. I don’t often believe in them which is another way of saying “I’m not big on conspiracies.” From a practical standpoint I agree with your last paragraph. The show me and I’ll believe point of view is rational and cannot be argued against.
At the same time the universe is a big place and there is way too much we don’t know and far away planets to completely rule out something else intelligent being out there.
Comment by TDavid — August 15, 2006 @ 10:40 pm PST
[…] - Penn and Teller demystify alien abductions but not E.T (5) [aug 10] - What do you unplug when you leave home? (**8) [aug 11] “I think it’s a good idea. You are right about things being plugged in continuing to draw power. So unplugging everything you can not only saves money, it is good for the environment. I have not been doing this since I didn’t know that things being plugged in still used power, but I plan to start.” – Comment by Lori — August 11, 2006 @ 9:02 pm […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Hmmcast #19: Catching up — August 18, 2006 @ 3:53 pm PST
Neuroscience may have a more prosaic explanation for the phenomenon of seemingly rational, lucid people claiming to have had an alien abduction experience.
I was in a smart shop in Amsterdam, and picked up a book called DMT: The Spirit Molecule, by Rick Strassman, M.D., who as an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico, conducted research into the nature of the psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine, which is produced naturally in small amounts by the human body. Strassman writes that high doses of DMT were injected into volunteers, 20% of whom reported experiences very like those of ‘abductees’. They described seeing small, grey-colored beings who seemed intensely interested in them, poking and prodding their bodies, all the while chattering excitedly among themselves, in metallic, clacking ‘voices’. These are very similar to the ’self-transforming machine elves’ described by Terence McKenna, which he postulated one becomes aware of after the ingestion of tryptamine-based psychotropic drugs. Interestingly, the brain neurotransmitter serotonin is a tryptamine, which is a precursor for alkaloid compounds such as psilocybin and DMT, and ergolines such as LSD.
Strassman theorized that people who report being ‘abducted’ by ‘aliens’ may actually have been tripping on DMT produced by their own bodies, which by some unknown mechanism, their brains can access during sleep.
I’ve smoked DMT, but alas, I met no machine elves. If I ever do, I’ll let you know.
Comment by Vince Williams — August 20, 2006 @ 10:06 am PST