Philip Spiess

Paul:  I thought our sun was the nearest star?  And wouldn't extraterrestrials likely come from planets [cf. supposed Martians -- Orson Welles' notorious radio broadcast of a supposed Martian invasion, based on H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" (1898) was in 1938 -- and Venusians among us]?  

Paul Simons

Right Phil. I’m in the realm of the vernacular where those tiny bright points of light in the night sky are something experienced as different from that big yellow-white orb that lights up our days. And I should have said that Proxima Centauri is the nearest star to our solar system that could have planets that support life. Technically yes the sun is a medium size star not as bright or as large as some but evidently just right for life on earth. You’re kinda missing the point which is that the distances are too great for there to be extra-terrestrials here. I’m always amazed at the fact that there are people who have figured this stuff out and made it available to us all.

About the Orson Welles radio broadcast - we know that many people believed it was real news. It’s a damn shame that today we are all too familiar with the fact that it’s easy to get people to disregard real new and replace it with absolutely false information - absolutely fake news. Regarding space travel I think - just my opinion - that most people have formed an idea of the time and distance frames involved from TV shows like “Star Trek” and movies, even recent ones like “Gravity” which vastly distort time and distance realities so that the plot can exist. I confess that I had no idea of the actual numbers before looking them up. 

Dale Gieringer

It's rash to assume that interstellar travel is impossible.  There's every reason to think there are planets out there with civilizations millions or billions of years more advanced than ours.  Our solar system is just 4.6 billion years old; our galaxy is three times older.   That's plenty of time for aliens to make tracks to our neighborhood.  True, our current-day physical theories say nothing can travel faster than light.  But what about physics millions of years more advanced than ours?  It's only been slightly more than a century that we've known that invisible radio, infra-red, ultra-violet and x-rays waves pervade the universe.  What else lies out there undiscovered?  

True, it's hard to separate the nuts from the fruitcake in the science of UFOlogy.   Years ago, my wife and I made the acquaintance of a University of California Berkeley engineering professor who claimed to have evidence of contact with aliens.  His sideline was hypnotism.  When hypnotized, his subjects purportedly described repressed memories of alien abduction, which he presumed to be true.   He asked us whether we'd like to be hypnotized.  I asked how many of his subjects turned out to have experiences of alien abduction.  One-third to one-half, he said.  That led me to conclude his subjects were fabricating stories. My wife and I politely declined.  Sometime later, I had a vivid dream in which I was being inspected by aliens.  They were bent over me while my body was suspended in mid-air, helplessly paralyzed.     Later, I learned those are common symptoms of sleep paralysis.

But that isn't to say there might not be a grain of extraterrestial truth in some UFO sightings.  There is a remarkable consistency in the nature of certain objects that have been reported, some going back to the nineteenth century.  Shiny, saucer-  or cigar-shaped objects that hover mysteriously with flashing lights, interfere with electrical fields, then zip swiftly away on zig-zag paths that defy the known laws of aerodynamics.  If interstellar travel is in fact possible, these are the kind of vehicles one might expect, operating perhaps on anti-gravity.    

Of course, there is also a centuries-long tradition of sitings of angels, verified by purportedly infallible Biblical accounts.  

Whatever the case, I'm keeping my mind open.

Jerry Ochs

If I slowly poked my finger into a two-dimensional world, the inhabitants would see a dot that gradually grows to become a circular solid.  If I moved it left and right they would see a UFO zigzagging about.  If I abruply withdrew it they would see the UFO disappear.  Imagine an entitiy from a 4-D world poking into our 3-D world. What would we see?

Paul Simons

There’s a saying that I agree with which is that the more extreme or extraordinary the claim is, the more convincing, solid, unimpeachable the proof must be. One can imagine anything, even for example that widespread fraud has been committed when none or almost none actually has. Believe it or not, people can become extremely aggressive, both verbally and physically, even violent, based on ideas for which there is no proof!!

Speaking for myself, proof is required if someone insists that I believe what they believe. That’s being realistic, not rash. Being able to imagine something doesn’t make it reality.

Unfortunately we are living in an era where the response can easily be “Yeah, and who are you? I don’t give a hoot what you think. I don’t have to prove anything to you. They’re here, I believe it, that settles it, and you can go to hell.” That might or might not apply to this particular forum. While WHHS seemed not afflicted by typical American racism and sexism, in my experience there never was nor is now immunity from elitism under that fabulous stately dome.

That will probably get my WHHS64 account suspended and I’ll have to go back to Facebook.

Philip Spiess

Dale makes reference to evidence in the Bible of UFOs, angelic or otherwise.  Let us not forget that many commentators, on both the Bible and on extraterrestrials, have cited evidence in the Old Testament of so-called "flying saucers."  This "evidence" is given in Ezekiel 10:1-22.  (Such backward projection is akin to the theory that Geoffrey Chaucer predicted London's "Crystal Palace" Exhibition of 1851, the world's first World's Fair, in his poem [ca. 1374-1385] The House of Fame, lines 119-127.)

Paul Simons

 Oh! UFO’s in the Bible! Well godd golly, that’s all the proof I need! Take down that Hubble space telescope which ain’t seen any and make them observatories which ain’t seen any into roller-skating rinks! They ain’t nothin’ but machines of Satan anyway, tryin’ to prove the world is a bunch of billions of years old in direct contravention - I say DIRECT CONTRAVENTION - to the Word of God!! It’s 5,000 years old and  them Aliens is here! I seen one of their space ships flying around when I was visistin’ my brother Luke out at Roswell. Looked like a silver fryin’ pan just like in the movies. Now them guys like Spielberg, they got it right on UFO’s even with their decadent elite Hollywood lifestyle.

Yeah that’s right I seen it. I was smokin’ a J with Officer Bensonhurst out behind the 7-11. You know he just transferred out from Washington DC where there was a problem. Something about doing not exactly the best job with the law and order business. Our Congressperson got him a fast-track transfer so he could get out of testifying. Well I can testify there’s nothing better than smokin’ out under the stars when an officer of the law is smokin’ right along with you! 

Bruce Fette

I would like to state that Dale's musings are in fact worthy of fair consideration. Another million years or so of scientific endeavor might well produce many understandings of physics and science that we do not currently have awareness of.

For example, antigravity might well be feasible if gravity operates in a principle similar to radio waves, perhaps by distorting the orbits of electrons around the nucleus.

Similarly, consider the possibility that accelerating to near light speed, may in fact make the traveller experience very little time lapse during the travel that might seem like a much longer time to observers who are stationary.  Now consider that a black hole at the center of our Mily Way galaxy is based on pyhsics not well understood where incredible mass is concentrated in a tiny volume. We may not understand the physics of black holes, or how gravity works at a sufficient level today for a physics class, neverthelss, there are many things we do not yet understand.  But if nonlinear physics exist that make travel at speeds faster than light speed, or make the distances able to be much smaller in some sense, then galactic travel may be feasible.

Furthermore, the pace of scientific evolution may be quite different for any hypothetical civilization living closer to the center of the galaxy, than a civilization far out in the outer regions of the galactic spirals, like our solar system. The inner regions of the galaxy experience a much broader range of physics than we do in our solar system.

As for intreraction with humans, consider that such interaction may involve much higher purposes than we are aware of. Perhaps a characterization of all galactic life forms and the corresponding genetics. Perhaps characterizing the evolutionary pace of life forms on galactic planetoids versus physics properties of the eneregy from the nearby solar energy source.

To consider other possibilities, sure, its also possible that one or more governments have very secret physics projects that we have no awareness of or understanding of.

Net-net, I agree with Dale, dont be too quick to dismiss those things we do not understand.

(Sorry for ending several sentences with a preposition).

PS. Happy New year to all of you!

Paul Simons

This is a video of a small mammal breathing a highly oxygenated liquid. MAYBE someday humans will be able to do the same. In the science fiction movie “The Abyss” they could. In the science fiction movie “Interstellar” a person travelled through a black hole or a wormhole and time for him did slow down radically. MAYBE someday as you say this will come to pass. I have no argument with statements that include the word “Maybe” in some form. But if it isn’t taking please don’t say that it is. We have certain politicians who are very good at that but in the long run nothing good comes of it. FYI I recommend those two movies. I have been nuts about Sci-Fi since seeing “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” and “Forbidden Planet” as a kid. Jules Verne imagined a submarine with something like a nuclear reactor supplying electric power for everything on it. The first actual nuclear submarine was named “Nautilus”,for the one Jules Verne imagined.

Bruce Fette

Paul, I loved all those movies too.

And by the way, I got to see the actual Nautilus briefly in Acapulco about 1970.

Philip Spiess

Does time slow down on occasion?  (Did Einstein say that it does in the universe?  I think he did, somewhere.)  I say it does.  I noticed this phenomenon years ago at work:  when a day was seeming to go very slowly, namely, on forever, and you were asking yourself, "Surely, it's damn near time for the cocktail hour now" -- only to discover it was just 3:00 o'clock -- I'd ask my fellow workers if they thought the day was seeming to go slowly, and they'd invariably agree!  Likewise, if the time just skipped away, and you'd thought you'd just finished your coffee when your boss said, "one quick meeting before you leave at 5:00," you'd secretly ask your colleagues if they thought the day had gone really fast -- and they'd say "Yes!"  Thus my empirical evidence that time does not march at a strictly regulated pace!

Paul Simons

Phil your enjoyment of the meeting might depend on where on earth it was taking place. I copied this right from Wikipedia:

Areas on the Equator have a constant 12 hours of day light all year round. As latitude increases to 80° (polar circles - north or south) day lengthcan be seen to increase to 24 hours ordecrease to zero (depending on time of year). Land of the Midnight Sun andPolar Winters where the sun never rises.

Just thinking about it (in very rough simplified terms which are all I’m capable of) if you’re standing on the Equator you’re traveling at the maximum speed of the earth’s rotation - very roughly about 1,000 miles per hour - the planet’s circumference in 24 hours. If you’re at one of the poles you’re traveling zero miles in 24 hours. You’re just slowly rotating. I realize this gives rise to the ancient insult that I haven’t heard directed at me, or directed by me at someone else, since wandering the hallowed halls of our esteemed Alma Mater - “Cram it and rotate it”. Timeless. Applicable towards certain individuals even today.

Jon Singer

Dr. Lleland Clark was the investigator who give that little mouse an injection of fluocarbon, then dunked him in liquid without any concerns.  When I could in 1972, I ate lunch at his table.  He was then a North Avondale living, wildly rumpled, white coat wearing Back to the Future looking scientific dude about 55-60 years-of-age.  His wife accompanied him at lunch in the Children's Hospital dining room. She arranged the contents of his brown bag and opened the plastic cutlery..  After they consumed homemade cookies, she lead him back arm-in- arm to the Research Building as he seemed quite incapable of finding his way or completing tasks of daily living.

In addition to this discovery, (which was originally intended as an alternate for blood transfusion) Clark invented the instrument universally adopted- percutaneous measurement of oxygen saturation-the little "O2 Sat" thingdingy the nurse puts on your finger,toe or ear before your colonoscopy.

As if those two acts of genius were not enough, Clark invented the device that read your blood sugar thru your skin.  Adopted soon after by many different companies, the advance has permitted diabetics to remain finger stick free.

It is quite possible that Lleland Clark (like Michaelangelo) having 2002 and beyond knowledge, was transported backward via a time machine.  OR, Si, don't freak, he may have been extraterrestrial and was planted by his mother/father shipmates on a clouded evening in the belly of the same cocaine stashing statue used by Albert Lederer in Eden Park. How else can Dr. Clark's miracle working be explained?

Paul Simons

First Jon I now think that Dr. Leland Clark, although not an extra-terrestrial himself, very likely was inspired by something not of this world. It seems that I owe an apology to several here. Dale, Phil, Bruce, Jerry, Jon evidently extra-terrestrials have been monitoring this forum and haven’t been amused - by me. Late in the afternoon yesterday I was outside and from out of nowhere the saucer appeared. A figure descended, as though weightless, very graceful, apparently female, and motioned for me to approach. I did. I became weightless myself and rose into the spacecraft.

I emerged into a dark room, the walls or perimeter of which were not visible. As my eyes adjusted to the light I realized it was a replica of a motel cocktail  lounge like you’d see in an episode of “Mad Men”. There were the type of drinks popular at the time - Carling Black Label beer,  Fleischman’s whiskey, RC cola. There were also what could only be identified as alien hookers. Or were they District Attorneys, psychiatrists, soccer champions? They were certainly astronauts. I sat down and ordered a drink.

I can tell you one thing - relevant to Jon's entry above - extra-terrestrials do like cocaine. "Lines on the table, lines on her face, they didn't care, they were caught up in the race" as The Eagles put it in "Life In The Fast Lane".

I don’t remember what happened after the drink came. I might have tried a snort of the purest coke I ever saw.. I had my phone with me but the last photo I took was looking down at the ground from inside the port hole of the spacecraft. The prismatic spectral light was one of three or four around the craft - some type of ionic anti-gravity drive I guess. I’m just now waking up, on the ground, amazed at what just transpired, luckily still in possession of my phone and convinced that yes, oh yes, they're here and they mean us no harm. In fact, in some cases, just the opposite.

Jerry Ochs

I think it was hashish and not cocaine in that llama.

Philip Spiess

It was also, I believe, in Mount Storm Park, not Eden Park.

Jerry Ochs

In many of the descriptions of flying saucers they are said to have bright lights around their circumference or they are seen as mysterious bright lights zipping through the sky.  Why would aliens attach lights to devices that are supposed to be stealthy?

Paul Simons

Jerry you have to remember that although alien astronauts are just like ours - the best and brightest, possessing the alien “Right Stuff” - they’re also, just like here, party animals. Those lights indicate that. Also in line with Jon Singer’s observation that people who seem incredibly gifted are in fact aliens or influenced  by aliens no one can dispute that Edison, Einstein, and Lily Tomlin are in that category. Lily Tomlin even went to the trouble to document her experiences:

Philip Spiess

Laura Pease and others:  If you watched the inauguration today, you may have noticed, during the gift-giving portion in the Capitol rotunda following the actual ceremony, a reference to Cincinnati's African-American artist, Robert Duncanson.  He was the painter of the 19th-century landscape chosen by Dr. Jill Biden (chosen from the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum) to grace the rotunda during the proceedings.  Laura Pease, I know, knows this artist well from her work at the Taft Museum, where his work covers some of its walls; others of you may recall that I wrote about him in Part III of my series on "Cincinnati's African-Americans" [Forum Post #4597 (3-11-20)].

Laura Reid (Pease)

Yes, thanks Phil.  When asked by visitors my favorite installation at the Taft, I always say "the 8 Duncanson murals".  I love the story of the relationship between Longworth and Robert Duncanson.....

Richard Winter (Winter)

Speaking of art, here is a newly available art treasure:

http://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/tour-virtuali-elenco.html

A virtual tour of the Vatican museum including such wonders as the Sistine Chapel, in 3-d.   Not exactly Iike being there, but you can look at the ceiling for quite a while without getting a sore neck and shoulders.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

I found at the site below Leonard Bernstein's opera Trouble in Tahiti, plus musicals, plays, Disney stuff for the kiddies (e.g. Frozen), all free. 

https://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/stage-shows-musicals-opera-free-stream-online_51198.html

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Back to the Fifties! Flash from the past! Especially for those who remember White Castle with such fondness....

https://safeshare.tv/x/FEDEwZHZXu

Paul Simons

Thanks Judy - the 50's thing - fabulous!!

Becky Payne (Shockley)

To Richard and others: I've never seen the Sistine Chapel, but I'm taking a virtual art history course. (The focus is on on Impressionism, but the instructor always adds stuff about recent developments in the art world.) Latest news i that the Sistine Chapel has undergone massive restoration (we saw before and after pictures and the restored colors are amazing!) and there will soon be a 3-volume set of 270,000 high resolution images of the ceiling and walls. Colors are said to be 99.4% accurate. They will only print 600 copies, and most will probably go to libraries, but you can purchase one for just $22,000!! (IAnd it will no doubt appreciate in value!)