UFOs and Modern Cameras

[tongodeon]

When I was a kid I was really big into cryptozoology: Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, etc. Also UFOs. Most of the "hard evidence" at the time was poorly exposed 35mm enlargements or grainy 16mm movies. It took a few seconds to set up an exposure and not a lot of people carried 35mm cameras with them. The "best" material at that time was the

Comments

two Problems of the S2NR issue...

[drieuxster]

dr_strych9 has already raised Fermi Paradox without address the two canonical problems. The first, let us call it the "C.S.Lewis Paradox" - based upon his Out Of The Silent Planet Trilogy - and I must confess where I ripped off the "plague beacon" thesis of Modern American Mass Media Broadcasting

[mmcirvin]

A couple of years ago, in reference to Scott Adams, I wrote something about my basic frustration with the Fortean attitude (or at least an extreme form thereof, as practiced by the likes of Robert Anton Wilson and Colin Wilson, and, I think, to some extent by Fort himself). This is the sort of anarchic notion that science itself is nothing but the bullying of humorless drudges who want to tell you what to think and stamp out lovely, weird possibilities.

I think that it's good to remain skeptical of arguments from authority, and that there's a real danger in treating scientists as priestlike authority figures-but I also think that the extent to which modern scientists want to be treated this way is exaggerated, and that there's an opposing danger in the way that far more powerful authorities, such as governments and corporations, can harness a jaundiced attitude toward science for their own ends.

[mmcirvin]

...that post also goes into Engineer Syndrome, a closely related but not 100% identical phenomenon.

[madbodger]

I think aliens MUST be involved. Lessee, 720P HDTV is 720x1280 pixels. At 8 bits per
pixel (4:2:2), that's just about a megabyte per frame. At 30 frames per second, you
would need over 1300:1 compression to fit that in 4GB. Now, either compression
technology has advanced incredibly since H.264 came out (aliens), people are willing
to accept utter crap as "HDTV" (likely), or I'm missing something crucial (that NEVER happens).