A Note on my Recent Column

Greetings!

It's been a long while since I've written anything, but I'll touch more on what I've been up to in another piece. Today I want to make a correction and add some clarification on my recent column, The Would-be Travelers, in UFO Magazine Vol. 24, No. 5 #158. Special thanks go out to Kirk Shorting. for bringing this to my attention and offering his input.

In my column, I said the following:

Presumably, any extra terrestrials out there come from very far off places. Let's say there is a planet 40 light years away that is inhabited by an advanced civilization capable of traveling near the speed of light. It would take them over 40 years to get from their planet to Earth. Assuming that their lifespans are similar to our own, they would spend half of their existence aboard a ship. The vast distances and limitation on speed would seem to make such long distance travel impractical for the purpose of simply visiting, and is one of the main reasons the idea of alien visitation isn't taken too seriously. After all, Earth is just one in trillions of planets that help make up our galaxy, and one that orbits a rather ordinary star, to boot.

This is not entirely correct, as I had not touched on the travel time relative to the traveler, as a result of time dilation -- and I hadn't noted a particular speed other than "near the speed of light" which can be interpreted differently, have numerous outcomes, and was therefore vague. I did this to kind of keep things simple for those less familiar with this type of subject, but at the same I don't want to give misleading information. So, let's start again with a more solid number, though, I will still simplify the results to ease this along.

A planet 40 light-years from Earth would take a little over 40 years to reach while traveling very close to that of light (ignoring acceleration and deceleration times), but only from the perspective of those of us on Earth. For the travelers themselves, the trip would be shorter because of the effects of dilation. How much shorter depends on how close to the speed of light they were traveling. At 50% the speed of light, the effects of time dilation are significantly less than at 90%, where, 1 year of travel as recognized by the ship's clock, would be equivalent to roughly 2 years back on Earth (though it's probably closer to 2.25 years). So, with that in mind, astronauts traveling to a destination 40 light-years away at 90% the speed of light might experience half that time (and some change when you account for acceleration and deceleration). Once you start getting to 90% the speed of light and above, the increase of dilation becomes extremely dramatic.

This happens because the closer one travels to the speed of light, the more time appears to slow down for the traveler. The clock on board the traveling vessel will show less time having passed in contrast to the clocks located at the ships point of origin. The faster a ship travels, the greater the dilation. If 90+ % the speed of light were achievable, the passing of time as perceived by passengers would be a fraction of that compared to how much time has passed at home.

So, while this type of travel might seem practical from the point of view of the traveler, it's important to remember that time still moves the same as always for the observers back on Earth. Which means that while the crew of our ship might have only aged 20something years at 90% the speed of light during their journey, people back home will have still aged 40something years. If that ship were to immediately return home at the same speed, you can double those numbers.

I've been rounding off and using approximations in the above examples, for ease of understanding (and because I'm nowhere near a physicist), but you begin to see some of the reasons why travel at near-light speeds becomes impractical, unless that trip is intended to be one-way only, and you don't mind the possibility of your destination not existing any more.

More about what I've been up to, later!

Image Issues

If some of you have visited over the last month, you may have noticed 2 things:

1.) I haven't posted anything for a helluva long while.
2.) Images such as the header and post borders were smaller.

I have a sufficient answer for both, but right now I'm going to address the image issue.

Sometime in early December, Picasa changed the default image sizes for photos. This means that if you used Picasa for images on your Blogger website, and did not specify a size within the image link (regardless of if you specified the height and width within the CSS), then your images would display at the new default size.

The way around this is to go to your Picasa account, locate the image, then right click (or ctrl+click on a Mac) and choose to copy the image URL. Paste it somewhere, and change the size value. The size value is specified just before the actual image file name and will have an 's' preceding it. For example, my banner size has a max width of 950 pixels, so the size within the image URL should be 's950'

I'm really pretty pissed about this, but have finally gotten around to correcting the issue here. Now I just have to cultivate the urge to look at and fix some of my other Blogger sites.

Oh, and Happy Holidays, everyone!

Open-Mindedness? Pshaw!

This is a few years old, but I found it recently via a friend. It's a brief 'educational' video more correctly explaining what 'open-mindedness' really means, as opposed to the typical definition as perceived by those who like to lob around accusations of close-mindedness when someone is skeptical of paranormal or religious claims.

It's well written, explained, and animated (1960's-esque cartoon/comic book art, a la 'The Sub Mariner' and 'The Hulk').

Summer Satellites and the Great Scar

Well, Summer is supposedly here, though it's not always easy to tell in Portland. Not that I'm bitching - you can have the heat and sunlight. The only thing that is sort of a downer is that sky-watching is less fun when it's cold and limits the amount of time you want to spend gazing upwards from a lawn chair. That said, last Saturday was a pretty decent night and after BBQing, my girlfriend and I pulled out the tri-fold lawn chairs and watched the sky for a couple of hours.

It may sound cliché, but it's really hard to argue against how well Dark Side of the Moon goes with watching the countless satellites drift through the salted sky, peppered with the occasional meteorite. I wasn't looking for anything in particular and had no hopes of catching anything mysterious -- that's not why I stargaze. But there was one particularly bright object that we caught in the Northwest moving speedily towards the Southeast. It had a brightness of 4 and was quite stunning. After a brief What The Fuck moment, we both realized it was the ISS. We confirmed this later by an online tracker that gave the exact time and location in which we saw the object.

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It Rhymes with 'Bars Mace'

If you've fallen for the recent 'Mars base' claims and have been too submerged in your own beliefs to look for opinions and information to the contrary, then this post is not for you!

Original:

Mars Express orbiter image H5620_0000_ND2

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Dimensional Wrinkles

Some time ago I had been thinking about the morph-able abilities of some UFOs, giving them an almost living quality, as opposed to an actual craft of some kind of metallic-esque alloy, welded or bolted together, with computers inside, some sort of propulsion engine, and a crew. I wondered if a vessel could be constructed in a way that would allow for physical transformation into various shapes, and what the purpose of such a vessel would be.

Then I began thinking about your more typical sightings: saucers, cigar-shaped, triangles, rectangles, and so on. How peculiar it seems that in our own imaginings (i.e. Science Fiction), alien ships would look something more like a Klingon Bird of Prey, The Millennium Falcon, or the Battlestar Galactica. If sightings of classic UFOs are indeed extraterrestrial in nature, the contrast is stark, with these craft carrying few details, save for their shapes, lights, and in some cases, portholes. And maybe that’s really how it goes. As creative as human beings appear to be, maybe we’re really over-thinking the whole thing. In fact, I’m pretty sure we are.

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Walking the Razor Wire

Regan has a post up over at The Orange Orb called The USSR Cause for Roswell? - Muddled Disclosures, about the new book by Annie Jacobsen, Area 51 - An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base. The book's theme is that while there are indeed mysterious events taking place at Nevada's infamous base, they are not alien in nature. At one point, Regan points out that when it comes to the mainstream, the general attitude is "No, it could never be aliens."

I have posted a response (that may still be awaiting moderation, so if it's not there when you read this, that's why), which basically brings up the dreaded Occam's Razor argument -- which I'm not opposed to, depending on it's application. But our understanding of the greater universe is still a very human understanding, and is therefore definitely limited. So, when discussing these sorts of unknowns, such as possible highly advanced extra terrestrial civilizations and their capabilities, it becomes more difficult to apply Occam's Razor in those contexts. On one hand, you could say that the argument is applicable based on what seems more likely:

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Cheap Wine and Plastic Cups: McMinnville 2011

I guess I'll give an update on the McMinnville UFO Festival. If you're expecting to hear my opinion of the three speakers, Robert Salas, Stan Gordon, and Paola Harris, you might as well click another link, because I only saw one of them and that will possibly be addressed in a collaborative post that Regan and I are considering. It might go a little something like this, though:

"Paola walks into a bar..."

My girlfriend and I had a mess of a time getting down to the festival. I had busted ass to get all of my work done on Thursday night so I could have Friday off to sleep in a bit, tidy up the house, and then get the Hell out of Portland. That all happened pretty much according to plan with the exception of timing. We hit the road an hour late, which turned into two hours and some change with rush-hour traffic. I use to think rush hour started at 5pm, but as I've grown older, I've come to realize that rush hour starts whenever I get on the fucking road.

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Just a Few Things

Last week I submitted my latest Saucers, Slips, and Cigarettes column to Nancy at UFO Magazine. The deadlines always catch me off guard, for some reason. I managed to finish, though!

The piece is called The Mediocrity of the Great Oz and talks (mostly) about how the abundance of information within Ufology has actually made me more skeptical of the ETH, when typically, you might expect the opposite. And yes, I am aware that many believe the so-called '4th Density' to be a non-physical realm, in which case, cocaine use would probably be non-existent. It was just funnier that way. Confused? You won't be after this episode issue of Soap UFO Magazine. Context is everything.

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Reaching Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Today I happened upon a post written by Bryce Zabel on A.D. After Disclosure, titled Calling Roger Ebert. I am not in the habit of reading A.D. -- not because I have a particular issue with the site or Richard & Bryce, but because I typically stay away from much of the disclosure topic. You can blame this on the Disclosure Movement, and not so much on the idea of disclosure. I'm all for it, provided there is something to disclose. However, I am skeptical that the government knows as much as many claim. But this isn't really about secret government knowledge or reverse engineered craft. Instead, it's about Roger Ebert.

It's really hard not to love Roger. Well, for me, at least. As a native Chicagoan myself, Ebert's face was always in the paper and, of course, on the television series At the Movies (along with the late Gene Siskel), which was a staple in our house during the 80s. He had a pleasant voice and a familiar perspective when it came to cinema. Ebert is certainly a knowledgeable and intelligent man, and so it came as little surprise to discover he recently penned a journal entry, A Quintessence of Dust. The piece is his perspective on the universe and sentient existence. It makes for an enjoyable read and is presented in such a way that anyone who has ever become dizzy pondering the expanse of space, would likely appreciate it. Go on, give it a read. It's rather lovely. He also gives a little nod to Prufrock near the end.

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12:50, Press Return

It's been a while, but I finally have a new article up at Women of Esoterica:

12:50, Press Return

It discusses my early interest in (and obsession with) numbers, and how music helped me to better understand mathematics, thus igniting my interest in science. I also talk about my belief that one day (in the far, far future) science will be able to observe and study what we currently refer to as 'the paranormal.'


~Deirdre

Conversations with Dr. John Mack

Interesting article over at The UFO Iconoclast(s) by Anthony Bragalia, regarding interviews and discussions he had with John Mack in the early 90s:

The Fabrication of Alien Abduction: My Conversations with Dr. John Mack

Clarification on a Statement

In my last article, Ufology: Live at Budokan I used the term "non-biased therapists."

In his article, The Illusion of Objectivity, Arvin Hill points out:

"It would be easier to prove the existence of highly advanced non-human, trans-human or non-corporeal intelligent lifeforms than prove the existence of non-biased therapists or hypnosis specialists"

I agree with this, but would like to make a clarification on my use of the term 'non-bias,' which may not need to be made, but here it is in case there is any confusion:

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Bruce Priddy - New BOA Columnist

Binall of America has a new writer: Bruce Priddy who introduces himself in his column The Paranormal Apostate.

Bruce writes:

"My name is Bruce and I'm an skeptic. Debunker. Nasty Noisy Negativist. Along with any other four-letter-word used in the paranormal community to describe people like me. Though often employed as pejoratives to dismiss without thought those who challenge claims of the paranormal, I wear them as a brand of pride. That is what I am, a skeptic, a critical-thinker (by definition, a skeptic is a critical-thinker; that isn't to say a believer is not a critical-thinker, far from it. But that is a subject for another column), and I see no shame in it."

It's lovely to see more skeptical, critical thinkers attempting (and I hope not futilely) to show that skepticism isn't the terrible, horrible abomination many within the paranormal believe.

Keep and eye out for his column!


*Thanks to The Debris Field for the link.

Ufology: Live at Budokan

It is often said that within ufology, the internal dialog is often more about it’s players than the phenomenon itself. While this is probably true in many fields of interest, it seems to glare more harshly in ufology.

In fact, ufology feels so propelled by the celebrity aspect, that it makes one wonder if there is really a true and deep interest in the subject by certain names, or if it’s a vessel for mediocre fame by those who might not otherwise gain notoriety. Big in Japan.

Hey, it worked for Cheap Trick.

In the case of abduction research and hypnotic regression, names like Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs are reminiscent to some of old-Hollywood royalty: even if they’re bad actors, they still get the headlines. And like Hollywood, interest is more often placed on the people themselves than the details of their work. Fans tend to cling to the legendary status of the figures they admire and adore, simply because of headlines, causing them to brush away criticism of their work, citing blasphemy.

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Goings On

Things have certainly been brewin' the last 2 weeks, and I probably have something to say about some of them. But not just yet:

I've taken on some additional work and have been swamped, leaving me a little behind in the current drama(s) within UFOlogy, and I'm probably also behind on my next column for UFO Magazine. Though, I'm not entirely complaining. Finances have been difficult the last couple of years, so, having more work has been a much desired development.

Anyhoo, despite my heavier workload, I do have a few things in the works that should see the light of day over the next few weeks.

Forensic Science - Best 50 UFO Blogs

Google Alerts brought this rather unexpected news to my attention. Apparently, Forensic Science has placed The Interstellar Housewife in the top 5 of their Best 50 UFO Blogs listing, and wrote a cute little blurb about the site. Regan Lee's The Orange Orb and Lesley Gunter's The Debris Field are also listed.

Check it out!

Paratopia Magazine: Preview

Paratopia, the brain-child podcast of Jeff Ritzmann and Jeremy Vaeni has entered a new vein in the vesel of a quarterly digital magazine: Paratopia Magazine.

Currently, Paratopia offers a preview which includes two full articles. The Priests of High Strangeness by Carol Rainey, an award-winning PBS documentary filmmaker (and ex-wife to Budd Hopkins), and Tainted, Toxic & Taboo, by Tyler A. Kokjohn, Ph.D, a biochemist and Professor of Microbiology at the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine.

This impressive preview of their first issue demonstrates the tenacity and to-the-point nature we've come to expect from Jeff and Jeremy, and serves as an excellent introduction into this new venture.

Paratopia pulls no punches with this puppy, building ever further on their case against hypnotic regression as a useful tool for abduction research and the lack of accountability by it's major players, namely Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs.

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In Response to an Email Request

And no, it's not a photo of me flashing my tits.

Last week I received an email from a man who thought I might be able to help him understand something about the abduction phenomenon and the claims therein. To protect his privacy, I will not be including his name or contact info, but only the body of his email (including the part where he says I'm attractive).

His email is as follows:

Hi,

I am contacting you just to see if you are a real person, I was not aware there were such attractive women involved with this UFO thing.

Anyway, my major reason for contacting you is to find someone who will answer my question as to why abductees do not have CCD video to provide proof of their claims of a felony kidnapping/abduction committed against them or their loved ones. If any of these people are allowing this to happen without contacting the police I believe this is also a felony or an 'indictable offense' in Canada; i.e., a serious crime, also not reporting a felony is a crime.


-Name withheld

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Codependent Lesbian Space Alien...

...seeks same.



*In case it isn't clear, I did not create or have anything to do with the above video.