Everyone's fan favorite kook Whitley Strieber (so much fun that I named my grey cat after him) weighs in with his "unbiased" opinions towards the recent UFO Special done by ABC News. I thought that it was ok, they did a good job of showing both sides of the issue and I think that the two sides alternated in looking like kooks. I find this quote from Whitley to be rather ironic: "The result is that their efforts become an exercise in hubris. They end up making judgements based on inadequate information because they believe that what they have gathered is sufficient."
I would watch throwing stones in that glass house, Mr. Strieber.
Whitley Strieber: The Scum Rises: Peter Jennings on UFOs
"The much heralded ABC special on UFOs has come and gone. Predictably, it was more of the same, a large number of lies sprinkled with a few truths. At least it wasn’t as relentlessly negative as such programs have generally been in the past. But people like Peter Jennings and his producers are cursed with the belief that they can understand—or already do understand—what they are looking at. The reality is that the UFO phenomenon is the most complex event in history, and a cursory examination of its surface by a few overworked and ill-informed television producers is not going to succeed in any way whatsoever to come to any truth about it.
"They are filled with belief in their own competence, however. The result is that their efforts become an exercise in hubris. They end up making judgements based on inadequate information because they believe that what they have gathered is sufficient. But it is not sufficient, it only fulfills their expectations and serves their assumptions. That's always where they stop, and it’s never enough.
"Jennings was somewhat open to the notion that some UFOs might be actual unknowns, and he actually told the truth, for once, about Project Bluebook: it was indeed a publicity stunt.
"But the characterization of the Roswell Incident as a hoax and the people attempting to investigate it as cultists was a grotesque lie, and, I think, an intentional one. It is classic disinformation—tell a little truth so that your lie will be swallowed along with it. Of course, how could anything more be expected from a man like Jennings? He’s a prostitute to the establishment, nothing more or less, and it is in the interest of the establishment to conceal the reality of Roswell." [via Posthuman Blues]
