(no subject)
Just caught a rather interesting programme on Channel 4 - UFOs: The Secret Evidence, presented by Nick Cook (I had a minor moment of panic when I couldn't remember whether he was the ex-MoD guy, the UFO crash recovery specialist and investigative journalist or the defence journalist - it was the latter - , all of which proves that there are too many guys named 'Nick' in UFOlogy).
For the most part the programme was pretty interesting and good. Nick Cook, being a defence journalist, focussed a lot on the idea that, since the end of WWII, the US have been testing a lot of experimental aircraft (the US spyplane, the stealth bomber and Aurora to name three) and using disinformation campaigns headed by the CIA to make people think they were all alien spacecraft and not secret aircraft. And let's face it, that's likely what's happened in a lot of cases - anyone remember the Belgian 'Flying Triangle' flap of 1987?
The problem came in the fact that Cook tended to focus a little too much on his specialist subject, and by the end of the programme (2 hours long) there was a lot of key cases and evidence that had been left out that would have been very useful and informative to look at - the aforementioned Belgian flap, the Rendlesham Forest incident of 1981, the UFO incident in Russia in 1988 or 1989 involving the 'giants' (I can't look it up because I can't remember how to spell the name of the town this happened in) and the Phoenix Lights incident of 1997, to name a few. Cook also tended to stretch the facts of certain cases to fit his own agenda somewhat (and here I put my pedantic nit-picker hat on) - for example, he stated that Lonnie Zamora, in the famous Sorrocco inciden, saw a classic 'flying disc' when in fact he saw an oval-shaped object with strange red insignia. He also suggested that the government is behind cattle mutilations because they're doing some sort of mystery tests (possibly radioactive), but gives no explanation as to why, out of all the soft tissue body parts to choose from, they keep taking the lower lips, rectums and reproductive organs. And he went an claimed that the first major 'alien abduction' in the states was that of Travis Walton in 1975, which while admittedly a major event, still happened a whole 14 years after the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill which placed the idea of alien abduction and aliens as 'greys' into the American consciousness.
*deep breath*
I shouldn't expect too much of these programmes, really. They never cover the stuff I think they should cover, or look at things in the right frame of mind.
For the most part the programme was pretty interesting and good. Nick Cook, being a defence journalist, focussed a lot on the idea that, since the end of WWII, the US have been testing a lot of experimental aircraft (the US spyplane, the stealth bomber and Aurora to name three) and using disinformation campaigns headed by the CIA to make people think they were all alien spacecraft and not secret aircraft. And let's face it, that's likely what's happened in a lot of cases - anyone remember the Belgian 'Flying Triangle' flap of 1987?
The problem came in the fact that Cook tended to focus a little too much on his specialist subject, and by the end of the programme (2 hours long) there was a lot of key cases and evidence that had been left out that would have been very useful and informative to look at - the aforementioned Belgian flap, the Rendlesham Forest incident of 1981, the UFO incident in Russia in 1988 or 1989 involving the 'giants' (I can't look it up because I can't remember how to spell the name of the town this happened in) and the Phoenix Lights incident of 1997, to name a few. Cook also tended to stretch the facts of certain cases to fit his own agenda somewhat (and here I put my pedantic nit-picker hat on) - for example, he stated that Lonnie Zamora, in the famous Sorrocco inciden, saw a classic 'flying disc' when in fact he saw an oval-shaped object with strange red insignia. He also suggested that the government is behind cattle mutilations because they're doing some sort of mystery tests (possibly radioactive), but gives no explanation as to why, out of all the soft tissue body parts to choose from, they keep taking the lower lips, rectums and reproductive organs. And he went an claimed that the first major 'alien abduction' in the states was that of Travis Walton in 1975, which while admittedly a major event, still happened a whole 14 years after the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill which placed the idea of alien abduction and aliens as 'greys' into the American consciousness.
*deep breath*
I shouldn't expect too much of these programmes, really. They never cover the stuff I think they should cover, or look at things in the right frame of mind.