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“You get a lot of whack jobs at conferences like this.”

7 Mar

March 7, 2011

The field of UFOlogy is too broad for its own good. While there is much that is unexplained, and many people who are sane and rational with usual claims, there is a fringe element that sets them three steps back for every single step taken forward. For every Stanton Freidman there are three guys with tinfoil hats to block beams shot at them by Zord, Emperor of Zeta Reticuli.

The following is an article from The Sun, a newspaper in England. I reprint it in its entirety.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/ufos/3441009/I-came-from-a-government-experiment.html

AN EXPECTANT hush descends over the audience in the darkened room as the woman up front begins to twitch.

As she curls her toes inside her worn grey socks, Cathy Star Eagle’s head falls forward and she talks in a low, monotone voice: “Greetings to all who have gathered seeking knowledge and universal truth.”

We’re clearly not at a conference for insurance salesmen.

The bizarre event is an extraterrestrial channelling session at the world’s largest UFO conference, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Each year thousands of flying saucer fans from the UK and all over the world descend on the five-day event – which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary – to hear from a range of wackos. Sorry, speakers.

The Sun has bagged a spot at Cathy’s much-anticipated sideshow – despite a ban on the Press – where she claims to pass on messages from The Ambassador telepathically

Not surprisingly The Ambassador turns out to be an alien, otherwise known as Loran, from the planet M42 in the Orion star system. But to sceptics, Cathy’s description of her ET pal doesn’t really help her case.

She says: “Loran is about 4ft tall, copper in colour, with an Asian appearance. He has a little bit of hair, but not a lot.

“Be careful what you ask because he doesn’t hold back – although he’s always respectful and discreet.”

Cathy, a somewhat overweight woman from nearby Tucson, is now in a trance-like state as she answers one question each from those present.

But rather than seize the chance to ask a real-life alien about intergalactic space travel, the audience are more interested in the mundane, quizzing agony uncle Loran on their house moves, career worries or relationship troubles.

One elderly man asks about his granddaughter, who is battling cancer.

Slowly Cathy, alias Loran, replies: “We do feel this situation is more positive than first thought. The malignancy is not as advanced as feared. Nutrition will be key to overcoming the disease.”

Then she blinks back into consciousness with all the theatrics of a pantomime actor.

Ironically, after telling the man his granddaughter needs a better diet, we spot her later in the restaurant with an equally overweight friend tucking into mammoth-sized hamburgers and fries.

Meanwhile, the conference’s vendor room is abuzz with activity as self-professed UFO experts flog all manner of merchandise. One book catches my attention – We Are Among You Already – and I approach the table for a look.

Author Jujuolui Kuita, 40, starts to chat and when I ask where she’s from, she says cryptically: “From where here on Earth?”

She is in fact from Concord, California, although she insists she is a hybrid, with part-human, part-alien DNA.

She says: “My planet is Faqui in the Andromeda galaxy. Since birth I’ve known I was from another place. I felt isolated and different, that this wasn’t my home.

“I am half reptilian and can shape-shift into another species called Fajan.” I can’t wait to see this.

“It’s scary when it happens in public.”

I really can’t wait.

“Although other people don’t necessarily notice because it happens at a higher frequency than they can see.”

Just my luck.

Elsewhere in the vendor room Cynthia Crawford is doing a roaring trade in scary-looking alien sculptures.

The 61-year-old claims her £115 creations promote contact with extra-terrestrials.

Then Cynthia, of Apache Junction, Arizona, starkly states: “I came from a government experiment. My father told me about it. He had operated with the government in Korea and experimented with alien devices found in their crashed ships.

“My mom was drugged as part of a programme and impregnated with me. For that reason my DNA is only 34 per cent human and I’ve got very porous bones, which are typical of my alien family. There are many races – Zuma Zeta, Tall White Zeta and Blue Archturian. I love them all. I channel their energies into my sculptures.”

Further along the hall Stan Romanek, one of the conference’s main speakers and a famous “alien abductee”, is selling his book, Messages.

The 48-year-old Colorado IT worker was a UFO sceptic until 2000 – when he says he saw his first flying saucer. Since then he claims to have been abducted several times and maintains his story is the most scientifically documented case ever.

Last year his footage of an alien apparently peering in the window of his home caused a media storm. It can be viewed on YouTube.

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, he says: “You get a lot of whack jobs at conferences like this.”

I like him already.

But he insists: “I’m just a regular guy who came into this community with no clue about UFOs. My first abduction occurred in 2001 when there was a knock on my door at 2am. There were three odd-looking creatures with abnormally large, almond-shaped eyes. They started leading me to the balcony and I felt a tap on the back of my head. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in bed with holes all over my back.”

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about his case is a series of equations he produced under hypnosis.

He says: “I’m not from a maths background and I’m dyslexic, so the symbols look like gibberish to me. One of the equations ended up being the structure of an element we didn’t even have at the time, element 115.

“Dr Claude Swanson, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has confirmed my equations are way above my level of comprehension.

“In fact, he believes they contain clues about the direction that physics is going to take and are beyond current theories in the field.”

 By DAVID LOWE
 d.lowe@the-sun.co.uk

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Mayor Bloomberg’s Alphabet Soup

17 Feb

February 17, 2011

I tend to criticize Mayor Bloomberg quite a bit, and rightly so. For example, while addressing a group of Irish businessmen last week he started his speech with a drunken Irishman joke. As you may imagine it didn’t go over so well.

However, I do tend to give credit where credit is due. On thing he did that I like is that restaurants now have to post their ratings from the Department of Health on their front windows or doors so you can decide if you even want to go in. Of course, these big signs are right at eye level and ruin the look of the restaurant but I guess that is a small price to pay.

The problem is that you never see anything but A ratings. That means one of two things. Either every restaurant is in sparkling compliance or the inspectors are doing their usual lousy job. There is an A-rated take-out place a block away from me that has had the same greasy stains on the wall since the Clinton administration (which, ironically, also was noted for a notorious stain.) Needless to say I don’t eat there.

Seeing all those A-rated stores had me pretty jaded until I saw a store proudly displaying a B rating. OK, pride had nothing to do with it, they legally had to post that sign.

As you can see from the image above, the lowest rating, which I have yet to see, is a C. The Grade Pending sign means that the restaurant received either a B or a C and is contesting it. Here is how the City of New York explains it:

A restaurant that receives a ‘B’ or ‘C’ on its second inspection can opt to post a ‘Grade Pending’ card in the window while it waits for a hearing before an Administrative Tribunal at the Health Department.

Once the Tribunal rules on the inspection, the final score is recalculated and the restaurant must post the grade it receives.
 
In other words, if a restaurant has a ‘Grade Pending’ sign, it had enough violations to earn a ‘B’ or a ‘C’ and it is contesting the low grade.

So why would a store post a B rating? If I understand correctly, and as a product of the NYC school system I may not, that means that the restaurant got a B or a C, had the chance to fix it, and didn’t. Right away that is a warning sign. If they are so lazy that they won’t do some work to get an A, how much effort are they putting into my grilled chicken wrap?

The problem is, who knows what these ratings mean? Why did they get a B? The reason may have nothing to do with the food. If a store got a B because of a blocked fire door or not enough seating, I would still order take-out. The reason needs to be posted on the sign.

I found this article on, of all places, http://www.wqxr.org. WQXR, 105.9 fm, is New York’s classical music station.

If a restaurant fails its health inspection, you might think it had rats, mice or roaches.

But sometimes, all it takes is a bunch of seemingly minor violations involving something as simple as the scoops used to take ice cubes out of a bin.

“Ice scoops can never be kept in the ice, ever,” said Neil Kleinberg, who owns Community Food and Juice, a restaurant near Columbia University.

The rationale is if you leave the scoop in the ice machine, it’ll get buried under falling ice, and then you’d have to dig it out with your potentially dirty hands, contaminating ice cubes that could later be chilling someone’s Diet Coke.

These types of violations can add up quickly and with a new restaurant grading system on the horizon, restaurants may have to work harder to keep their doors open.

I think I would take my chances with that place. I may order my Diet Coke without ice but I’d eat there.

Kleinberg, who supports the city’s move toward a public letter grade system, took me on a tour of his 120-seat restaurant. In the basement he pointed out other Health Department rules. For example, signs reading “Employees must wash hands before returning to work” have to be on display in bathrooms, and bathroom doors must have a self-closing hinge. A bathroom door can never be left open because flies could move in and out and then contaminate your chocolate cake.

A violation for an “employees must wash hands sign” is meaningless to me. Yes, I want the employees to wash, but sign or no sign, there is no enforcement. How could there be unless they are going to post lookouts in the bathroom, and that would be more off-putting to me than the lack of sign. I don’t want a look-out in the bathroom keeping an eye on things.

As for the hinge, doesn’t the door open and close anyway whenever someone enters or exits? What fly sees the self-closing hinge and gets so intimidated that they find another bathroom to inhabit? I’d think that the fact that bathroom was dirty enough to attract flies in the first place was a bigger problem.

The bottom line is that having a little bit of information is almost as bad as having no information. So while I do commend Mayor Bloomberg for the initiative, I give him a C rating for half-assing it.

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