The Booty Snatchers

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." — Carl Sagan.

Wired has a new feature called Tinfoil Tuesdays. Okay, I'll put my hat on.

This week's story is UFOs Neutered Nukes, Officers Claim. Seven retired Air Force officers called a news conference to say they encountered UFOs that rendered U.S. nukes temporarily inoperable during the Cold War.

Obviously, these extraterrestrials are concerned about the survival of the human race and want us to abandon our nuclear arsenals... or so it would seem.

Every generation tries to imagine the motives of other-worldly beings. I recently read The Eerie Silence, and author Paul Davies points out that each generation projects their own fears and priorities onto the invading aliens. H.G Wells popularized the notion that aliens would value real-estate and mineral resources; wealth in Victorian times meant physical stuff. But a century later, we found ourselves in the middle of "the information age," so we reasoned that aliens would place no value on gold and diamonds, but instead their source of wealth would be knowledge.

Unsurprisingly, our benevolent Cold War visitors wanted us to disarm, but I have to wonder what the concerns of year 2010 aliens would be? If they're still worried about nuclear missiles, they might want to invade Iran or North Korea and save us the work. Better yet, use that nuke neutering device to permanently switch off all nukes, not just a handful.

Or maybe a modern alien fable would be about taxes. Imagine the aliens as teabaggers -- scary thought.

Or maybe the alien civilization would be organized as a giant corporation looking to suppress individual freedoms, bribe politicians, and get billion dollar bailouts...

Space aliens should be the least of our worries right now.

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering." — Arthur C. Clarke.

We Interrupt this Program...

On October 30, 1938, the Martians invaded New Jersey.

Since I thought hoax week 2009 was so much fun, I decided to experience the greatest hoax of them all: Orson Welles' radio broadcast of The War of The Worlds. I put the mp3 on my iPod and listened to it alone in the dark...

It starts off as a dance music broadcast -- or at least what they called dance music back then. But the party is interrupted by an Intercontinental Radio News report of enormous blue flames shooting out of Mars. Then, minutes later, another report that a meteor has fallen to Earth! Then, a minute later, reporters are ready at the scene for continuous coverage of the meteor. But then the meteor starts to open! It's really a spaceship, and it has tentacles!

"Good heavens -- something's wriggling out of the shadow," the fake newscaster reported. "It glistens like wet leather. But that face -- it… it is indescribable."

The whole thing is so not scary. The timeline alone is unbelievable. I guess it's just one of those things where you had to be there in the 30's, listening to the miracle of modern radio and trusting -- trusting that this was an urgent news bulletin and taking it all as fact. These people weren't stupid, but the world outside our own atmosphere had not been demystified yet. So thousands of listeners panicked:

Believing that the nation had been invaded by Martians, many listeners panicked. Some people loaded blankets and supplies in their cars and prepared to flee. One mother in New England reportedly packed her babies and lots of bread into a car, figuring that "if everything is burning, you can't eat money, but you can eat bread." Other people hid in cellars, hoping that the poisonous gas would blow over them. One college senior drove forty-five miles at breakneck speed in a valiant attempt to save his girlfriend.

But still, there is the annoying detail that during the broadcast there were three announcements stating that this was a dramatization of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. The newspaper that day had also listed the program as an adaptation of the book.

Could it be that the reports of mass panic are also a hoax?

But historians also claim that newspaper accounts over the following week greatly exaggerated the hysteria. There are estimates that about 20 percent of those listening believed it was real. That translates to less than a million people.

At the time, newspapers considered radio an upstart rival. Some in the print press, resentful of the superior radio coverage during the Munich crisis, may have sought to prove a point about the irresponsibility of the radio broadcast.

Somehow I'll sleep a little better knowing common sense prevailed during that historic misunderstanding. However, I'm still greatly disturbed over the dangerous crap that educated people are willing to believe today.

The Great Egress

Let's go to the circus, and see The Great Egress. The signs indicate something stunning, and the arrows point the way. The crowd follows, whispering rumors about the fascinating secrets of the Egress. They go through the doors, and end up outside. There they see a sign with the definition of egress: "1) The action or right of going or coming out. 2) a place or means of going out." And now everybody has to pay 25 cents to get back in.

There is no proof that P.T. Barnum ever said "there's a sucker born every minute," but he did say "every crowd has a silver lining." The man would still profit brilliantly today...

Just tell people you have a shocking video of a living, breathing space alien, and watch the bloggers and mainstream media swarm to you. Better yet, claim you are a former CIA analyst with a scandalous video featuring a politician or his wife (as I laughed about earlier this week), and watch your web traffic skyrocket.

The profit is more than monetary if one has a political agenda. Because the rumors, embellishments, and lies grow as we head down the dark corridor towards the egress. The damage is done long before we reach the door.

The world has fallen for many hoaxes both political and scientific. A hoax usually sounds like it has some kind of credibility by association, has some technical sounding language, and often enough, the artifact or video never even surfaces.

As we head out the exit this time, the sign will say "Oh, grow up!"

Daily Terror

To be menaced by invisible flying monsters is a sure sign of mental illness. If the whole town is terrorized, it's mass hysteria. I imagine such hysteria would look a lot like Hitchcock's 1963 film The Birds but without the birds. This strange concept is an ongoing project by artist Martijn Hendriks. Hendriks is digitally removing all the birds from the classic film. Clips of the reconstructed fiction can be found here, here and here.

But those imaginary monsters are still clearly fiction. The Guardian takes us half a step into reality in the recent article I'm Loving Aliens Instead. Writer Jon Ronson follows UK pop star Robbie Williams to the Nevada desert to explore another paranormal threat -- UFO's! Yes, seems Williams wants to believe in aliens. When he is asked why aliens do not reveal themselves to humans, he gives this explanation:

"I think maybe they're making mistakes," he replies. "I think the shield comes off by mistake and they were there all the time." He pauses. "I don't want to hear any debunking because I want to believe."

So, the guy is definitely not a skeptic. How far do you take it though? If you are a believer, is there a point where you stop and say "wow, this is just too ridiculous!" I'd think most people would question the sanity of these people:

Apparently, a woman tells Ayda, a number of conference attendees spotted a battle between two giant reptilian beings in the desert outside the hotel the other night.

"Did anyone take any photographs of the battle?" Ayda asks her.

"No," she says, "but someone collected a tissue sample and gave it to Dr Roger Leir. He might show it to you, if you can find him."

In a world where nearly everybody has a cell phone with a digital camera built in... in a world where we are always ready to film a dog eating vomit... you'd think somebody would capture an epic battle between giant reptilian beings!

So, I ask what exactly do YOU fear? Are our favorite fears real or imaginary? Or should I ask are our favorite fears real or manufactured political distractions?

It's easy to laugh at the UFO believers and the ghostbusters, but are liquid bombs really a threat to air travel? Are we in danger if our government doesn't have unchecked surveillance powers? Have we underestimated the risks of climate change? We need to have real debates about these issues and stop swatting at invisible flying monsters.