Fascinating!

UFO’s are all over the media lately, and not just on the History Channel and the Travel Channel. 60 Minutes recently did an extensive story on the government’s admission that it had started investigating the phenomenon again in 2007. The 60 Minutes segment can be seen on YouTube here, and several extensive stories about the new UFO revelations can be read here and here. 

And this month, the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Defense are required to share their findings with Congress.

 

The US Air Force had conducted several research efforts into UFOs in the past, starting with Project Sign in 1948, then Project Grudge in 1949, and finally the famous Project Blue Book that ran from 1952 until 1969. Once Blue Book was shut down, the government said that it would no longer spend resources trying to figure out what was behind the phenomenon. The study’s official conclusion was that the vast majority of sightings were misidentifications of everything from temperature inversions, unusual cloud formations, meteorites, swamp gas, and stars, to birds, weather balloons, and conventional aircraft. Since UFOs appeared to pose no threat to national security, there was no reason for the government to be in the business of studying them.

 

That changed, apparently, in 2007 when Nevada Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader at the time, had been given information about Navy and Air Force personnel—including fighter pilots and radar operators—routinely seeing unidentified flying objects. These UFOs (or UAPs, “unidentified aerial phenomenon,” as the term UFO had been rebranded) would routinely exhibit flight capabilities beyond those of any existing aircraft in the world. Just as decades’ worth of UFO sightings claimed, the unidentified objects would be capable of speeds exceeding those of any known Earthly aircraft and would perform maneuvers, again, beyond the capabilities of aircraft manufactured by anyone in this world. The UAPs reported by the military personnel must have been powered by technology we can’t even theoretically conceive of. Aside from their abilities to accelerate or decelerate at rates that would most likely compromise the structural integrity of any aircraft—and kill any living being inside it—several of these mystery craft had been seen plunging into the ocean or emerging from it to fly away into the sky. 

 

Harry Reid’s reaction to this information was the request that $22 million be allocated to the Pentagon’s black budget to study these UAPs. As the Senate Majority Leader, he got what he asked for.

 

As the links to the stories attest, the result was the establishment of a study group called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), run by the Defense Intelligence Agency and tasked with cataloging the UFO/UAP sightings. AATIP was funded until 2012 and the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force was a follow-up program.

 

We now know all this because a former AATIP director, Luis Elizondo, leaked the information to the media after resigning, allegedly frustrated by the Pentagon brass’ lack of interest in trying to determine what the UAP’s are. In 2017, the New York Times broke his story in this article.

 

So, any day now, we could get the Defense Department's report on all this and, at the very least, it’s expected that the report will acknowledge that the military is aware that some sort of hyper-advanced aircraft are able to enter U.S. airspace at will and evade our most sophisticated defenses. What these aircraft are, the report will no doubt say, nobody knows.

 

If, in fact, the government is “keeping something hidden,” as so many UFO-conspiracy films, TV shows, and books have claimed, that hidden information, I always suspected, is this sort of ignorance. There is something in the skies and we don’t know what it is.

 

Such information would be quite sobering, if not disturbing. It’s actually much more disturbing than all the rococo conspiracy theories about retrieved alien flying saucers and back-engineered UFOs in Area 51. The unknown is the most frightening thing in the world. 

 

It should inspire what past governmental studies of UFOs could not: a broader investigation of the phenomenon by the scientific community. Hopefully scientists might step up and do what Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Project Blue Book’s skeptic/debunker-turned-believer called for when he said the subject needed “agnostic” investigators. It needed people who neither blindly wanted to believe, nor their mirror-image opposite, the zealous debunkers who had made up their minds that UFOs could not possibly exist before examining the facts.

 

What might eventually derail any such open-minded investigative efforts would be the hard-core conspiracy theorists once more. The conspiracy culture in the UFO community had already driven scientists away once before. As French information scientist and UFOlogists Jacques Vallee wrote in his 1991 book, “Revelations,” by the 1980s scholars like himself had walked away from UFO investigations because the field had been taken over by the saucer-crash proponents and the uncritical believers of ever increasingly outlandish theories about aliens in underground bases experimenting on human abductees, extraterrestrials living among us and walking next to us on the street, or ETs clandestinely running the countries of the world. The sober, cautious, and conservative investigations of lights in the sky and distant sightings, Vallee writes, was just not as sexy as the lurid tales of alien abductions and clandestine military/alien partnerships. But the “sexiness” of the conspiratorial claims had also killed the chance of mainstream science taking the UFO phenomenon seriously.

 

Hopefully that won’t happen again.

MUSCLES! MAYHEM! MURDER! And the FATAL POSE plot reveal!

 

September 14 is the date! My new novel, the murder mystery FATAL POSE is dropping from World Castle Publishing and Gunnar Marino and Erika Lindstad are investigating the deadly side of professional bodybuilding! And check out this sneak peek at the plot...

Venice, California: Where you’ll find the hottest beaches, hottest gyms, and hottest bodies. This is where ex-bodybuilder turned private investigator, Gunnar Marino, runs his business.

​

The World BodyBuilding Federation: The most successful health and fitness empire in the world. But WBBF President of Operations, Laura Preston, suddenly finds herself in the middle of a blackmail scheme, with bodybuilder Brad Holt threatening to expose a shattering secret from her past.

​

Where two adversaries meet: After Holt dies at a contest from what appears to be a dangerously unhealthy dieting regimen, Marino is hired to look into whether or not his demise might have been the perfect act of murder. But the deeper Marino digs into the case—pressed by a personal obligation to Holt's sister—the more unsettled he is by Holt’s background, questioning the morality of seeking justice for a corrupt murder victim and pursuing a prime suspect who might have been a victim herself.

​

A showdown no one might walk away from:  Finding himself in an escalating battle of wills and wits with Laura Preston, Marino is aided by a group of athletes he employs as an investigative staff, and Dr. Erika Lindstad, his former lover and ex-bodybuilder in her own right. But the more troubled Marino gets by the case, he realizes that he has no choice but to see the investigation to its conclusion...because suddenly he and everyone he cares for are targeted for death.

You don't become a successful conspiracy theorist like this...

So, my "anti-fan," Hank Wolfe, on the Before It's News conspiracy site is again claiming that I am up to more dastardly deeds and wickedness. So far he had accused me of being a part of a plot to brainwash my students using 5G technology during my online classes and to replace students who are critical of conspiracy theories with computer-generated "deep fake" doubles. He seems to imply that I either had advanced knowledge of the COVID-19 outbreak or I'm just taking advantage of a COVID hoax - his postings are not quite clear if COVID-19 was manufactured or it's a hoax and no virus actually exists - in order to enslave my students. Since he doesn't seem to be accusing me of being one of the creators of the pandemic (or hoax), I am actually a bit disappointed. I really would have liked to have been accused of something as grand as causing the entire outbreak, or maybe just sitting on the all-powerful Committee of Doom that had manufactured the pandemic.

Now in a post from December 23, which I just noticed on Hank's Before It's News page, he does accuse me of being the mastermind behind the 2020 metal monolith mystery. My novel, CONFIRMATION, Hank argues, is but a bit of "predictive programming," or a part of some greater global plot. I need to reread his post since I can't quite recall his muddled line of "reasoning." Or you can check his posts about me and monoliths here and in right here.

It's true that I joked around about the monolith connection to CONFIRMATION on this blog, but it was, you know...A JOKE!!!

Now it's easy - and oh, so enjoyable - to make fun of a second-rate fantasist like Hank Wolfe. He makes broad declarations of grand conspiracy theories without offering a shred of proof for any of them. In fact, he does not even try his hand at the sort of conspiracist illusion of proof where he provides links to other conspiracy sites making their own unsubstantiated claims. 

That sort of citation, for example, is the stock in trade of State of the Nation, where each of their unhinged claims of COVID hoaxes, alien space weapons, and false flag operations reference a large number of other sources. Those sources, of course, are conspiracy theorists or just previous State of the Nation articles. This sort of circular method of self-referentiality is so amusing that I think I might use it as a teaching tool in my research methods class this fall. Study State of the Nation very carefully, I will explain, to learn how not to present research.

But Hank Wolfe does not bother to try and reference his shocking claims with even the sort of inept approximation of the scholarly citation system. Hank, actually, appears to be somewhat of a lazy conspiracy theorist, posting claims of far-reaching evil plots sometimes weeks, or even months apart.

What Hank does do on occasion is offer links to some news stories he attempts to use as proof that some immense conspiracy can no longer be kept secret. For example, check out this post where his headline screams that the January 6 Capitol riot was so obviously a false flag attack that even The New York Times says as much. Except the Times does no such thing.

And then we have Hank's latest postings about several stories in the Saint Peter's student newspaper, The Tribune. He argues that these two stories - check them out here and here - just about admit that my grand scheme of controlling students' minds are in full swing. The first story, about marijuana legalization in New Jersey is really an admission of an MKULTRA-style mind-control experiment, or so says Hank. The the story about students and faculty starting their COVID vaccinations, Hank writes, is a glimpse into the university's forced vaccination policy. If anyone reads these stories, they will immediately see that Hank is either spectacularly delusional, can't read, or that he thinks his fans are as lazy as he is and would never check his sources.

Hank Wolfe really could benefit from taking my class on conspiracy theories. The Do It Yourself Conspiracy exercise could help him come up with a much more convincing fake conspiracy theory than the kind of lame material he posts on his Before It's News page.

But I guess we can thank Hank for his ineptitude. In a way he helps shine a light on this bizarre cultural phenomenon that has gone so far off the deep end that at its core is but a collection of fabricated stories by sad, desperate losers and opportunists dreaming of becoming next Alex Jones. Hank's nonsense about 5G mind control technology and online learning come through in much fewer articles that say the constant deluge of rancid sewer sludge on the Sate of the Nation or Millennium Report sites. Although Hank sometimes proclaims in very matter of fact tones that the COVID pandemic is a hoax, his focus still seems to be on the more exotic realms of MKULTRA-like brainwashing conspiracies. His work is both scattered and inept. It is not in the league of the shear, cold-blooded, opportunistic evil of a conspiracy site like State of the Nation that repeatedly implores its readers not to get vaccinated, not to wear masks if one is not vaccinated and in the company of strangers, and to avoid all safety precautions that might stop the spread of COVID-19. Hank Wolfe is but a sad, inept clown, a wannabe in a crowded field of aspiring conspiracy influencers. His competition, like State of the Nation, on the other hand, spreads information that's as close as one could get to attempted murder.

A piece of advice from a manipulative Svengali...

...please read beyond just the first paragraph or two of an article you are commenting on. That is a problem I recently noticed on the oddball "Before it's News" site of a certain Hank Wolfe who occasionally accuses me of using online education and secret 5G technology for mind control. Or something to that effect. Apparently he is attempting to blow the lid off of the sinister "Donovangate" plot I am masterminding to take over all of education or replace students in online classes with computer generated artificial intelligence avatars.

So looking at a recent post from Hank, I saw that he is still obsessed with Donovangate and mind control, looking for signs of it in my school newspaper's articles. In this piece, he comments on the length of an article I had posted about before. The Saint Peter's Pauw Wow - now renamed the Saint Peter's Tribune - had interviewed me about the QAnon phenomenon and Hank Wolfe, connecting those dots as he usually does, uncovered more clues to my occultic plot to bring on the new terrifying age of the New World Order.

And then Hank gives a warning about an SPU Tribune piece about marijuana legalization in New Jersey. Of Hank's work, this is actually one my favorites, as he calls me a "Svengali" who has complete control over the heart's and minds of all of Saint Peter's University. The SPU Tribune article, Hank warns portentously, is an endorsement of campus drug use. This drug use, he declares, is but a new attempt at enslaving the minds of students in the same vein as the Cold War-era MKULTRA drug experiments did.

Now, of course, Hank offers no concrete evidence of legalized pot in New Jersey somehow being a part of any mind control project, and also mischaracterizes the very point of the Tribune article. The article merely acknowledges the legal status of marijuana in New Jersey and reiterates that the smoke-free Saint Peter's campus does not allow pot smoking anywhere. But as any good conspiracy theorist, Hank quickly adds two and two to get five. Except when the true thesis of the Tribune article is so easy to check, I wonder why Hank would even bother to try and distort it as he does. It might be a better idea for Hank to move out of that basement at last, get a job somewhere, and put his efforts toward becoming a more productive member of society than a teller of weird, unprovable tall tales about Donovangate, 5G brainwashing, and Satanic plots.

So the lesson to take away from all this is to spend a mere two to three minutes double checking the sources of any nutter conspiracy sites like Before It's News and you'll wind up laughing at the crudest, clumsiest attempts at deception. Two or three minutes, that's it!

Cover reveal for my forthcoming novel!

A murder mystery in the world of professional bodybuilding.

In the city of Los Angeles, where fitness is almost a religion...

One of the most muscular...will soon fall!

Great piece on the mind-boggling weirdness that’s QAnon

I am quoted extensively in this excellent bit of investigative college journalism about the utterly bizarre roots of the great American derangement of QAnon. 

The Saint Peter’s University newspaper ran this article examining a part of the modern conspiracy culture whose beliefs appear to be stranger and stranger the more one looks at it in light of all the media coverage it received in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

 

From its unknown origins in the bowels of the 4chan message board in what might or might not have been a prank, this movement resembles both a role playing game from hell and a cult at the same time. It’s a sort of do it yourself, crowdsourced conspiracy where thousands of people have coalesced around a movement with no known leader—aside from whomever it is that has been posting unintelligible gibberish about “storms” and “great awakenings” on the Internet—and also a kind of a cult with no charismatic leader.

 

No matter how one looks at the ongoing saga of QAnon, I think any clear headed person will only see madness.

“Debris” is a fairly intriguing sci fi thriller

So here's a change of pace and a recommendation of a pretty good new science fiction/mystery series that just debuted on NBC.

In the vein of the X-Files, the story involves CIA agents Bryan Beneventi and MI6 agent Finola Jones working together to track down various pieces of debris that had rained down upon the Earth from a wrecked, derelict alien space ship. The bits of debris are scattered all over the world—thus the multinational effort sending agents around the globe to track down the pieces—and each of these bits of alien scrap metal appears to have a variety of paranormal effects on people that come in contact with it.

I always liked these kinds of ongoing supernatural/sci-fi/thriller shows built around an ongoing mythology and a vast, complex mystery that will take several seasons to unravel. The X-Files used to be this combination of the continuous mythology mixed in with the occasional standalone episode, or, as the X-Files used to call it, the “monster of the week” episode. Then, when Lost came along to zeitgeist-defining, smash hit ratings in 2004, the series eschewed any stand-alone episodes in order to focus its storyline on the labyrinthine mystery behind the true nature of a mysterious island in the Pacific. I enjoy this sort of a format—kind of like a soap-operaesque storytelling style adapted to a science fiction show—because they respect the attention span of their audiences and they always give me that feeling of rewarding the loyal and attentive fans who are willing to stick around and enjoy the slow-burn of a complicated mystery that will take a long time to completely unravel. Upon Lost’s success, a number of other shows jumped on this same stylistic bandwagon, but, unfortunately, most TV viewers did not have the patience to stick around for several years to see where all these other complicated mysteries were bound to go.

So this time Debris is taking a shot at the mythology-building story format and I’m intrigued by where the story could go. Although one slight flaw I’m finding in the first episode is that it doesn’t reflect at all on what the confirmation of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life does to the psyche of the rest of the world. Unlike other investigation-of-the-uncanny shows, in Debris the entire world knows about the fact that the strange metal that came from the skies is from an alien spacecraft. So it would be interesting to see the show examine how this sudden knowledge alien life impacts the psychology and the sociology or the rest of the world. What would undeniable proof like this do to belief systems, to religious systems? How would the mere knowledge of life beyond the stars effect people’s everyday outlook on life? Hopefully the show will deal with these questions at one point. 

I’m also somewhat intrigued to see that our heroes are government agents who are not butting heads with any kind of a deep mysterious conspiracy. Or at least not yet and not too obviously. There are a few hints that Bryan and Finola are not entire straight with each other about what each other’s government knows about and wants to do with the debris. And then the episode’s final scene also hints that Bryan might also not be aware of a deeper and darker agenda in the U.S. government. But at least so far the creaky old conspiracy tropes have not been pulled out of the mothballs and reused yet again, just as they have been used in decades’ worth of movies and TV shows. 

In the age of QAnon and Alex Jones, it would really be nice to leave the heroic conspiracy theorists back in the mothballs where they belong.