I always find it fascinating when the mainstream media gets hold of one of those stories that they just don't quite know what to do with.
You know the ones I'm talking about, right? One of those events comes along where science fiction seems to cross paths with reality, and all of a sudden you've got a real life Twilight Zone situation on your hands.
Sometime back in the 1990s, these type of stories briefly exploded into our national collective consciousness all at once, and with such force, that UFOs and aliens seemed to be everywhere. It seemed you couldn't pick up a magazine or turn on the television without seeing one of those little gray alien images, or hearing the various buzzwords of UFOlogy like "Roswell," "Area 51," or "The Face On Mars."
Thanks to the millennium fever which gripped much of the world at the time, as well as television shows like The X-Files, "the truth" as they say, was definitely out there, even if only for a little while. Still, as quick as the idea of UFOs as a cultural phenomenon came, it just as quickly went away - but not before it had been permanently etched into our collective consciousness. In other words, a lasting impact had been made.
So, perhaps as a result of that UFOmania of the nineties, when these sorts of stories come along — as they do every now and then — they have a unique way of capturing our imaginations. As I said, it is also always interesting to see how the media plays them. About this time last year, we saw one such story about a series of UFO sightings in Chicago, seen by numerous witnesses in broad daylight at Chicago's airport.
The media dutifully reported the story, even if they did so a few weeks after the fact. The television commentators also accompanied their coverage with the usual combination of nudges and winks. The story came, the story went. Yet, at least as far as I know, the Chicago sightings themselves were never adequately explained away.
This month, we have not one, but two such stories that would seem to be ripped straight from the pages of Fate Magazine.
So remember the face on Mars?
Back in the nineties, there was considerable talk among both UFOlogists, various pseudo-scientists, and even a few legitimate researchers about a NASA image that appeared to show a giant stone face carved out on the surface of Mars. Some even compared it to the Sphinx. NASA originally attributed the mysterious face to a trick of light and shadow. Later, they released new images from a later expedition that showed what appeared to be something less strange. To me, it looked like a more eroded version of the same thing, and made me wonder if they actually have wind or dust storms up there. Anyway...
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Article comments
1 - Delling
Alien woman? Wind-blown rock? Ink blot? So far I'm the only one who sees Aquarius. Well, at least I'm the only one who'll admit to it publicly.
Oh, can't forget about the Aussies. A large triangular "craft" was spotted over Australia, on Google Earth.
Fun, fun.
2 - Dr Dreadful
Oh blimey.
The so-called 'figure' on Mars, whatever it is (and it's 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999% likely to be just the edge of a rock) is no more than a few inches tall. So if it is a Martian, we would seem to have very little to be alarmed about other than getting squishy alien remains on the soles of our spacesuit boots.
As for Australia, well, all kinds of weird things could be happening (and have happened) in the vast uninhabited expanses of the Outback. The entire population of a stricken alien planet could decamp and set up home in the middle of the Western Desert, and we'd never know about it.
3 - Phyllis Templeton, Mesa Arizona
[Phyllis, you appear to have inadvertently commented on the wrong thread. I have taken the liberty of moving your comment to the review of the movie No Country for Old Men, which I think is where you intended it to appear.
Assistant Comments Editor]
4 - Glen Boyd
Thanx Asst Man. I was about to ask her if she viewed that movie inside the theatre or aboard a UFO.
-Glen
5 - Jurgen Reitze
Hi! Well,I don't know why they/you ridicule the Statue on Mars saying it's Bigfoot. It's like when they said " I saw a banana-thing flying up on the sky!" - Immediately, we get a smile and discard half the fact as nonsense.
The trouble with debunkers, it's that the rock seems to be a human figure- no matter what.Someone at NASA said "It's not a man, it's only a rock". Great. The Moses of Michelangelo its also a rock.
6 - Glen Boyd
Assuming that you are talking to me Jurgen, I wasn't ridiculing the subject at all. Having a little fun with it, sure. But if I ridicule anyone at all here it would be the media -- and even there I tried to keep it light -- for not taking things like this more seriously. No matter how ludicrous the subject may seem to some, it is still their job to be objective. Which come to think of it, is what I tried to do here.
-Glen
7 - billy j rachels
everyone seems to making fun of the rock/being i have been researching/investigating ufos and ets for over 40 years and i have 2 reliale sources that tell me their is live on mars and they live underground.check out the caves and domes on mars.this just might be the proff that we are looking for.anyone in sw ga n fl who wants to discuss ufos/ets face to face meet 2nd sat 12noon thomasville ga library billy j rachels
8 - CeeTee9
First, the Media is controlled by the government. True investigative and objective reporting fell by the wayside years ago.
Second, some UFOs are real and that's a fact! I have no problem with those who can't accept that fact and want to remain in denial, but please don't post comments that clearly show your ignorance on the subject. Virtually everything I have read by the naysayers is flat out wrong and makes it quite obvious they haven't a clue about the subject. Either that or they just want to perpetuate the misinformation that the government has been doling out for (at least) the last 60 years. If you want to voice your negative opinions on the subject that's fine, but say something like "I haven't a clue about UFOs, but I don't believe in them." At least that's an honest response and not misleading anyone.
Third, if you REALLY want the truth to be revealed about UFOs, support the Disclosure Project's agenda (see www.disclosureproject.com and the NPCâ€"National Press Conference).
Write your Congressmen to pass a law that will release anyone (in or out of government) from their national security oath who has information relating to the UFO cover-up. Give them, say, one year to come forward. After that, the deal is off and anyone later found guilty of continuing the cover-up for whatever reason will be brought up on charges of treason. Yes treason. Perhaps 60 years ago there was reason to keep this information from the public, but with the millions of people who know the truth about UFOs around the world, there is simply no reason to keep it from the rest of the public any longer. Unless, of course, those who wish it to remain a secret have ulterior or nefarious motives; like plotting to overthrow our form of government and rule the planet with the technology they have been reverse-engineering for half a century. And I wouldn’t be so quick to laugh that statement off. There is a significant amount of evidence out there that supports just such a notion.
There are already over 400 government officials willing to come forward with what they know and were involved in within the governmentâ€"according to the Disclosure Project. If these and more people can come forward without fear of criminal prosecution (or worse), we might just get the answers we've been seeking.
And if it is all just a bunch of bologna then what can it hurt? We already have thousands of stupid and useless laws on the books. What's one more?
Come on people! Do you have the guts to REALLY discover the truth?
9 - BLASe
No one except maybe the people who took the photo's can really know for sure what the images (carvings) are at this point, but there is a possibility that they were constructed by someone isn't it? After all there are many things that were obviously contructed here on earth by beings who have visited here. Look at the Nazca lines that can only be seen from the sky. I am suprised at the fact that even these were shown to the public considering the testimony of certain people from Nasa telling us they usually airbrush the photos before showing them to the public.
UFO's And The Star People
10 - Dr Dreadful
No one except maybe the people who took the photo's can really know for sure what the images (carvings) are at this point
A simple slightly-more-than-cursory glance will reveal to anyone but an idiot that 'Bigfoot' is the shadowy side of a small rocky ledge. It's like that optical illusion of the shadow picture which is a vase if you look at it one way and two faces in profile if you look at it another.
Looked at one way, it happens to resemble a humanoid figure. So what? A brief examination of just the small area of the photo that's reproduced above revealed, to my eye, rock formations that look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, a shoe and a cordless drill.
So I guess Donatello, Raphael and the boys have been busy doing some barefoot remodeling up there.
11 - Kristen McDonald
First off, let me say that I am not sure as to whether I believe in UFO's or not, but those pictures seem a little far fetched to me. They are only pictures. Anyone with the slightest knowlegde of Photoshop can fake a picture. But as for the UFO sightings, I don't think these kinds of stories should be swept under the rug. To assume that there is no other intelligent life anywhere else in the universe seems very arrogent to me. Finally, in response to Ceetee9,we live in time of mass paranoia and fear. Maybe certain things should be kept from the public, if only to keep chaos from ensuing. Does anyone remember the Y2K fiasco? I am not saying I am right on the matter. I could be completly wrong. These are only my thoughts.
12 - Dr Dreadful
First off, let me say that I am not sure as to whether I believe in UFO's or not, but those pictures seem a little far fetched to me. They are only pictures. Anyone with the slightest knowlegde [sic] of Photoshop can fake a picture.
The picture isn't faked. It's just not a picture of a Martian, it's a picture of a rock.
But as for the UFO sightings, I don't think these kinds of stories should be swept under the rug.
Agreed, except when they're patently absurd, as most of them are.
To assume that there is no other intelligent life anywhere else in the universe seems very arrogent [sic] to me.
Two points. First of all, the only reason most people assume that UFOs are manifestations of alien technology is thanks to the fertile imaginations of 1940s sci-fi writers. I too have seen things in the sky that I couldn't identify. However, I don't see any reason why I should conclude that those objects were spaceships from other worlds.
Secondly, it may also be very arrogant to assume that intelligence elsewhere in the universe would be in any way, shape or form recognizable as such to us.
Finally, in response to Ceetee9,we live in time of mass paranoia and fear. Maybe certain things should be kept from the public, if only to keep chaos from ensuing. Does anyone remember the Y2K fiasco?
I remember another time of mass paranoia and fear. It was called the Cold War. We all knew what the nukes would do if they were ever let loose. If we'd let that knowledge rule our heads, we'd all be living 500 feet underground by now.
And Y2K? Media-fueled tempest in a teapot. It was well prepared for, did not create public chaos and panic, and was never going to be the technological Armageddon some would have led you to believe.
13 - duane
Kristen says: To assume that there is no other intelligent life anywhere else in the universe seems very arrogent to me.
It has nothing to do with arrogance. As Dr. D. points out, it has only to do with the lack of convincing evidence that we should associate UFOs with extraterrestrial life forms. It is a massive leap in logic to go from something in the sky that can't be explained to alien visitation.
To counter your implied statement that the standard assumption is that we are alone, you might take a look at the Drake Equation, which has led many sane astronomers to estimate that intelligent life, possibly technological civilizations, are scattered far and wide throughout the Galaxy. The "standard" assumption has long been that there MUST be alien intelligence out there. Yet, these same sane scientists put little stock in connecting UFOs with these putative aliens.
The Drake Equation is notoriously unreliable, in that it requires plugging in numbers that can only be guessed at. In the time since it was put forth (1960), a fair amount of research funding has been put into the problem of ETs (SETI, for example). Also, the worldwide effort to find planets around nearby stars is marketed, in part, on the hopes of discovering ET. It's early, but nothing yet.
Progress on other fronts has pointed to Nature's capriciousness in steering the course of human evolution. Many exceedingly unlikely events have occurred to allow humans to emerge from the slime* -- such as global mass extinctions, the causes of which are still under debate. As another example, if the Moon weren't there, complex life forms could not have evolved -- the Earth's spin axis would not be stable, leading to climatic changes too extreme for complex organisms to evolve. Only recently has a plausible theory of the Moon's origin been put forth, and the circumstances had to be very particular. These kinds of discoveries have the effect of reducing the numbers that go into the Drake Equation. It appears that revision downwards is a robust trend.
* Another scientific result that has been co-opted by the (largely, non-scientific) Intelligent Design proponents.
14 - Jesus Christ
I believe that Bigfoot is real because I know what Bigfoot really is. The film that Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin made in 1967 in Northern California at Bluff Creek of Bigfoot was real. Here is what they filmed on October 20 1967.
Several thousand years ago there were thousands of slaves that ran off around the world and started their own countries. When these slaves ran off there was a large group of men and boys that took off and ended up in Africa. Some of them were giants as tall as 9 ft. or even taller. The giant named Goliath that David killed with his slingshot was 9 ft. tall.
Some of these men and boys went exploring to Borneo and used ropes to catch female orangutans and took them to South America and had sex with them and created the Indians. The men and boys that stayed in Africa caught female gorillas and had sex with them and created the Africans.
When scientists found the bones in Africa they thought we evolved naturally from a female chimpanzee. But it wasn't a natural evolution it was a man made evolution. That's where all the Bigfoot and Orangutan creatures come from. They are half man and half gorilla and half man and half orangutan.
They use to call the Indians the red man. The orangutan has reddish hair. When those men bred out the hair the Indian's skin remained red. The gorilla has black hair and skin. When those men bred out the hair the African's skin remained black. Some of the Indians and Africans are tall.
And some of the Bigfoot and Orangutan creatures are tall. They are tall because some of the men that created them were tall. Some scientists believe that we evolved naturally from a female chimpanzee. Have you ever seen an 8 ft. tall chimpanzee? I haven't either.
Bigfoot migrated up through Africa and came into the United States at the top of Africa when they were connected by land. The Orangutan creatures migrated up through Central America and came into the United States like the Indians did later on. The first Europeans that saw the Africans said that some of the African women had genitals that resembled that of a gorilla.
If you look at the nose of an African you will notice that it is wide like the gorilla's nose. The creature that Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin filmed in 1967 was half man and half gorilla. It was a female Bigfoot that they named Patty. Patty was not a man in a costume, she is not our missing link and she is not a figment of our imagination.
Patty was a creature that was created by men that had sex with female gorillas and orangutans a long time ago. Believe it or not, man created his own evolution.
15 - costa
that thing that looks like a bigfoot on Mars, is probebly only the edge of a rock on Mars, and it probebly not taler than 2 inches tall, and not Marsen, or bigfoot or any othr kind of a manape on Mars, and if it is, it's very, very small, so unless they very smart and got technolegy that we don't, we got nothing to worry about!!!???
16 - Jesus Christ
1900- 1.6 Billion People,
2012- 7.0 Billion People,
112 years- 5.4 Billion People,
Solution to problem- Stop Creating Children,
The life you save just might be the one you don't create.