Indeed you can. And I'm getting a bit fed up with the sniping.

Last warning, people. Attack the argument, not the person.

Come on Barnacle, tell us about the UFO you've seen

I was on a flight over the Caribbean one time in the late 70's and what book did I happen to be reading at the time.......The Bermuda Triangle

Fiat Coupes are out of this world.

The argument has gotten rather circular, I fear. My summary:

Mankind has had extensive contact with extra-terrestrial visitors, including direct communication with them and access to interstellar craft for at least 70 years (at least starting with the US government accidentally shooting down a space-ship with powerful radar at Roswell).

This alien contact is top secret to the extent that the US government has had people killed, discredited or destroyed their academic records to keep it secret, while ignoring the 100s of web-sites that are full of this information, the legion of 'credible' witnesses talking about it on the UFO lecture circuit and other governments around the world declassifying their UFO sighting records.

The secrecy about the alien contact is so tight that no physical evidence of it has ever been obtained (despite the security also being so lax that dozens of people who claim to have been involved in these projects have written books, talked to reporters, appeared on TV, etc.) In fact, the physical evidence is so tightly guarded that we can see no evidence of the US military, or anybody else, ever having benefited from these alien technologies.

It's possible that there is an ultra-secret (but also utterly pointless) spy plane, the successor to a very secret spy plane, which uses anti-gravity technology reverse engineered from alien tech, but also based on the 1915 work of Albert Einstein, 1963 work of Robert Forward and physics which can, apparently, be explained on about 2 sheets of A4.

A site which works to offer support for insiders coming clean about secret alien contact ties all of the above storylines together, into what can only be, dispassionately, described as an enormous and ugly tapestry of hairy bollocks, with future humans mistaken for aliens as the weft, and Mayan 2012 doomsday prophesies as the weave, with a fine filigree of planets that NASA (and 99% of professional and amateur astronomers worldwide) say don't exist.

Of course, if you're part of the common herd, and not familiar with the fine detail of this story, all you're left with is a few blurry photographs, some low quality videos (although you have to go looking for those, as the government stops news outlets reporting on them, so you have to comb underground subversive websites, like YouTube, to get your hands on them) and a lot of reports from people who saw wildly varied things in the sky.

We can only assume, by the way, that these visiting aliens are extremely polite, as when we've shot down their ships with radar, fired 1,400 shells at the ship they carelessly flew over LA the week after Pearl Harbour, or just stolen their technology they have continued to respect the government's wish that they remain hidden and not, say, landed on the White House lawn and hammered on the door, demanding that their dead be repatriated and that boffins stop taking apart their space-toaster, because that will invalidate the warranty.

That's how I see it, anyway. Can anybody spot any holes anywhere in that? It seems pretty watertight to me.

Oh, and I forgot my favourite bit - while the US is doing all of this cack-handed cover-up the Russians are putting their UFO crash investigation videos onto YouTube.

Yes, gasp in amazement as half a dozen young Russian soldiers smile for the camera in sunny Costa Del Freezeyernadsov, mostly obscuring a home-made crashed space-ship in the middle distance. Later there's medical japes ahoy as an alien autopsy is conducted with exactly as much scientific rigour as two tramps fighting over a chicken carcase.

And that's on the evidence A-list, apparently.

This would be my summary of the alien conspiracy viewpoint. Mainly because the UFO believers 'evidence', 'witnesses' and 'science', stood up to very little cross examination before being debunked or, at the very least, challenged to a point where the subject was swiftly moved on or ignored.

Here is just a summary of my own questions from very early on in the thread which went unanswered despite acknowledgement:

When clarification of why 'mainstream media is forced to suppress evidence' and yet news articles were used as proof. I was told that, (and i'll paraphase) the game had changed in the 70's so NOW they are supressed but they werent before, despite FOX News clips being used from 2000's.

When 'evidence' of a US military aircraft backward engineered from alien tech was presented, no answer ws given to why they would use a trillion $ 'recon' plane when 20 years ago military thinking decided that hypersonic recon planes were fundamentally flawed and prohibitively expensive when they could just used moveable satallites at a fraction of the cost.

There was also no answer why USAF would develop a plane which could stay in the sky nigh on indefinatly, but then design it to be piloted by humans who would require food and waste storage, require sleep etc and would therefore be a massive weakness in the operational effectiveness of the military hardware.

Evidence was asked of the 13-month information gathering exercise by a US Government hacker. The only 'evidence' provided was a list of 'claims' made by the hacker. Why? Apparently he was too "bedazzled" (the hackers words, not mine) to remember to take any evidence at any stage during those 13 months.

ObXKCD reference:

Last time go and google x-37b. indefinate loiter.
the unbuilt x-37c could be piloted and will transport astronoughts.

the x-37b can get to places the more predictable spy sats get to but capture the things the sats may mis. its also able to be launched and return in one rotation.

And it is robotic. Oh is that a spy plane? Can it steal other peoples sats we don't know.

Neil - rather than lock down another thread because of one or two persistent abusers, would it be possible just to ban them from it, so that we who NEED it to continue are not sent down the plug hole along with the bath water?

Just back on the subject of dyslexia, and not directed at anyone here, I have to say I find the above statistics and analysis implausible.

To begin with, it is utterly at odds with the evidence to claim 10% of the population as being dyslexic. In my experience as a lecturer, around twenty percent of new students exhibit sloppy, misspelt, poorly punctuated writing in the early days, but most of those improve dramatically when told where they are going wrong and threatened with failure unless they take it seriously.

[Although, having said that, there do seem to be quite a few people who just cannot or will not learn.

For example: There is no 'a' in 'definite', 'indefinite' or 'definitely'. Even so, many people seem to be unable to accept and remember this fact. I still think this is in most cases down to laziness or lack of interest, though.]

Secondly, the suggestion that dyslexics are particularly strong in 'creative' careers is a misinterpretation; I would suggest that it is because dyslexics do poorly at job interviews for 'regular' jobs that they are forced to pursue careers that don't require good writing skills. That's why there are so many of them being successful in 'creative' careers.

Just reading about that, there is NO mention of indefinite loiter. It quite clearly states a time frame for orbital time, and no mention of 'loitering' inside the atmosphere: "The X-37B was designed to remain in orbit for up to 270 days at a time"

It cant take off without being on the back of a rocket, has no recon ability, and it's primary use will be...wait for it... "to rendezvous with friendly satellites to refuel them, or to replace failed solar arrays using a robotic arm. ".

So it's even DESIGNED to maintain the spy satellites you claim it is replacing

:edit: Oh and still no mention of alien tech.

Well I've had my telling off from the mods and won't be doing any more insulting.

Sorry for the personal insults, Jonny - are we going to continue this discussion?

This probably requires its own thread, but I disagree with some of what you say, Enforcer. I agree that grammar and spelling are not regarded with the same importance as they were one or two generations ago leading to widespread neglect, which frustrates some people (me among them, but less so these days).
My wife is dyslexic and yet has had a successful career as a diplomat and has trained senior UN staff in strategic communications. However, she is primarily a visual artist and author and is enormously creative. She is also incapable of telling left from right (fun on car journeys), but when we substituted "Fish and Chips" - initially as a joke - she got it right every time - we think because in a visual image, fish sits to the left of chips. Her elder son is dyslexic (not the younger one or her frighteningly intelligent daughter), but highly imaginative. He can't spell or tell the time, but he is very bright and musical. He had years of specialist help from a unit at Reading University (ironically!) and his reading age was raised to his actual age by the time he was 10, something that conventional education (and lack of understanding) completely failed to achieve.
Personally, I think dyslexia is a sliding scale and with the right kind of assistance many of the symptoms can be mitigated.

Back you go to flying saucers.

I am confused, are you saying the dyslexics are actually aliens??

Haven't you seen Peter Cushing in Doctor Who and the Dyslexics?

Perhaps a separate thread for daily sex dyslexia?

And for discussion of top secret military planes (unless they've been reverse engineered from stolen spacecraft bits).

People in my office have just stared at me as I laughed out loud at that one.....

Only on FCCUK could a thread about UFOs descend to the (sadly common) level of sniping at people whose spelling or grammar isn't perfect.

However, seeing as we're being picky about spelling...





Just the sort of mistake a dyslexic would make - oh, the irony....

Are we allowed to tell the "What does DNA stand for?" gag?

I've not heard it, so yes!

No, you have to wait for the dyslexia thread.

No selling your soul to Santa, either!

Edited to add: And absolutely no mention of dyslexic, insomniac, agnostics.

why would there be alien tech? Its daft. don't. belittle our own inginuity. i am trying to direct this back on topic with things that can be misinterpreted .

Bugger!!

I think I can still insult you, Enforcer, owing to your excellent track record of giving as good as you get

I was thinking in terms of getting you banned. Too late now - the element of surprise has been lost.

ok stop there, this is as far as ive got, YOU need a history lesson here. the sr71 is nowhere near the most advanced aircraft we have, for 1 we dont have it anymore,its been retired, other than that it was designed to do one thing, fly high and fast so that it could not be shot down as it spied, we now have satellites for this purpose. the sr71 could be out classed in agility by most small aircraft let alone fighter aircraft. if the sr71 was sooooooo advanced why could they not make it so that it was sealed at all altitudes? it leaked at ground level. it is also not the fastest manned aircraft ever, just the fastest jet aircraft, and it is LIGHTYEARS behind in technology to the equipment used today. as for pulsejets? theyre for model aircraft, to TRULY go fast you want ramjets or scramjets.

Fair enough, but you'd have to admit there is a big leap between a next-generation space shuttle and the claims we've seen on this thread of a nuclear powered, anti-gravity, triangular shaped aircraft, with a quasi-crystal skin, which can "make the vehicle look like a small aircraft, or a flying cylinder – or even trick radar receivers into falsely detecting a variety of aircraft, no aircraft, or several aircraft at various locations".

That's not misinterpreting current tech for something slightly outragous. That's watching an episode of Babylon 5 and calling it a documentary.

edited as im gonna just wind myself up if i read anymore of his drivel.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Imagine that a UFO has been found on a beach somewhere. It looks like it has suffered some crash damage. The doors are open and inside there are strange shaped seats, odd looking controls.
Now while some of the population will be sayingthat this is proof. Sane normal people will want to make sure that this is not some elaborate hoax. What obviously must be done is to examine this thing as closely as possible. I'd want the metals checked for composition, i would want every control panel completely disassembled. Every single component in that craft would need to be examined. if after all of this is done and none of the components that are recovered are found to be manufactured on earth, even then, it would not be enough evidence for someone to say that the craft was made by extraterrestrials.
There would need to be a piece of tech that is completely new to science. I don't mean something that is 5 or 10 years away from our present technology, I mean NEW technology.

This is the bare minimum of what people should expect as some proof.

So how do you think that we, as intelligent humans should react to people who think it is ok for us to use dodgy videos, blurry photos and eye witness accounts,as some sort of "proof" in the existence of extraterrestrials?
I don't care how "credible " a guys testimony is...its still the word of some guy.

The trouble is, people WANT to belief so much sometimes, it skews all reasoning.

..