Author Archive | David Metcalfe

From Beyond the Grave – The Final Edition of Saucer Smear

By on December 17, 2012 in News 0

The Men in Black never beat him, and death can’t either. Jim Moseley’s recent passing hasn’t stopped him from getting out one last issue of Saucer Smear.  Since the early 1950′s Moseley has been front and center for the development of the UFO culture. Officially named in 1981, Saucer Smear was the final iteration of a popular insider newsletter that he had been producing since the early ’70′s.

The newsletter has been a staple of UFOlogy, and provided an open forum to discuss every aspect of the field from classic cases to the latest arguments in the ranks of the UFOlogical elite. Dr. Tim Brigham, a personal friend of Moseley’s and a Contributing Editor at Saucer Smear, sent out the following brief communique to announce the digital release of the final issue:

Don’t let the MIB stop it. Download your copy of the Last issue of the longest running flying saucer zine in the galaxy: Jim Moseley’s ‘Saucer Smear.’ In loving memory (and free!)

Watch The Skies

Tim Brigham, Phd

Contributing Editor, Saucer Smear (Ret)

In true form this issue covers critical exchanges with Nick Redfern over the reality of MIB’s, Stanton Friedman over his credentials as a physicist, and the sad state of contemporary UFOlogy.… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 0

W. S. Burroughs Restored

By on December 16, 2012 in News 1

“Viruses are obligatory cellular parasites and are thus wholly dependant upon the integrity of the cellular systems they parasitize for their survival in an active state. It is something of a paradox that many viruses ultimately destroy the cells in which they are living…”

- from ”Virus Adaptibility and Host Resistance” by G. Belyavin, as qouted by William S. Burroughs in The Electronic Revolution: Feedback from Watergate to the Garden of Eden

“What we are up against: liars with no honesty or integrity or decency, just plain bastards…”

- William S. Burroughs, from Last Words

William S. Burroughs’ post-mortem existence is predicated on the maintenance of his mediated body, and one of his current hosts is in need of restoration. Howard Brookner’s documentary, Burroughs: The Movie, originally released in 1985 by Giorno Poetry Systems, has been out of print for quite some time. Long available only at a collectors price, and in the original VHS, Brookner’s nephew, Aaron Brookner, has created a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the release of a digitally re-mastered version taken from an original archival print of the documentary:

“Our aim is to remaster and re-release the first long feature documentary ever made about literary icon William S.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 1

Expanding Our Experience of Psi – Biophysical and Clinical Approaches to Parapsychology

By on December 6, 2012 in News 8

While much of the current debate around the existence of psi exists in the field of psychology and cultural studies, the history of psychical research is actually based as much, if not more, in the physical sciences and clinical medicine. In a recent piece for Reality Sandwich researcher Paul Devereux discusses the biophysical experiments of Dr. Michael Persinger and Blake Dotta at Laurentian University, Ontario, and how the evidence from experiments like these is bringing our attention back to the physical characteristics of the phenomena:

“Parapsychology generally provides its evidence in the form of statistics, and so is all too readily subject to the charge of “lies, damned lies and statistics” – how reliable is monitoring lots of subjective responses to laboratory tests, and why isn’t psi robustly repeatable in experimental conditions?  When it comes to actual, real-life psi experiences – telepathic or precognitive events, apparitions and so forth – critics tend to level accusations of misperception or dishonesty against the claimants, and point out that in any case such reports are merely anecdotal, and not acceptable as scientific evidence.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 8

Love, Magic and Holy Death – A Conversation with Dr. R. Andrew Chesnut

By on December 2, 2012 in News 0

Every month there seems to be another horror story in the media regarding the devotional traditions associated with Santa Muerte, the American folk Saint of Holy Death.  One of the most recent news story details the discovery of a weathered human skull and jaw bone, along with what police are saying are remains of a Santa Muerte altar, in a dumpster in Oxnard, California. Another item announces that true-crime author John Lee Brook has been commissioned to write a  “tell-all” book on Santa Muerte and her “occult” connections to the Mexican drug trade. The title of his last book,  Blood In Blood Out: The Violent Empire of the Aryan Brotherhood, probably gives a good idea for where the focus will be.  There is, however, another side to Santa Muerte, whose associations with love magic predate any ties She has developed to narco-trafficking and murder.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss this in more detail with Dr.… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 0

AI on the DSM IV – A Thought Experiment from David J. Kelley

By on December 1, 2012 in News 4

With the recent news coverage of scientists discussing robot uprisings and the possible dangers of artificial intelligence, it’s interesting to see a direct thought experiment along these lines from Microsoft UX developer David J. Kelley. In a recent h+ Magazine article, Interview with an AI (Artificial Intelligence) – A Subtle Warning…,  Kelley provides an outline for an experiment that seeks to gain some understanding of how an AI would respond during an interview. As he explains it:

“I was thinking about ideas for an article on my train ride home from the experience lab I work in, and it came to me that it would be interesting to actually have an interview with an AI only a little bit better than us, maybe one that is one of the first kinds of true AI and for fun let’s say it has lived with us for a few decades incognito. But how can we do that?

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 4

James W. Moseley, Founder and Lead Editor of Saucer Smear, Has Gone Off-World

By on November 19, 2012 in News 0

A more tangible loss has come to the UFOlogical community than the recent announcement by some folks in the UK that the Age of Flying Saucers has come to a close. Jim Moseley, founder of the longest running UFO magazine around, Saucer Smear, has passed on at the ripe age of 81.

Jim brought an air of humor and sociological consciousness to what can otherwise be a contentious and cliquish field of inquiry. Saucer Smear’s running motto was, “Shockingly Close to the Truth,” which provides a good idea of where he was coming from. Greg Taylor, founder of The Daily Grail, puts it well in his memorial published on TDG:

“Jim Moseley entered the world of ufology at the very beginning, with his first two magazines devoted to the topic, Nexus and Saucer News, being published in the 1950s. He was an associate of many ‘legends’ in the Fortean field, from Gray Barker to James Randi – and like those two individuals was somewhat of a trickster figure, often straddling the line of truth that separates researcher from raconteur.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 0

The Death & Rebirth of UFOlogy – Telegraph’s Report on UFOlogy’s Demise Could Be Its New Beginning

By on November 6, 2012 in News 3

Neil deGrasse Tyson is talking panspermia from Mars, Richard Dawkins mentions ancient aliens as a possible candidate for development of complex biological processes, Jacques Vallee presents at a business forum on physics breakthroughs possible through studying UFO phenomena, Michio Kaku develops a theory of social evolution based on space…and the Forteans give up on UFOs? What is happening here?

According to an article on The Telegraph:

“Enthusiasts admit that a continued failure to provide proof and a decline in the number of “flying saucer” sightings suggests that aliens do not exist after all and could mean the end of “Ufology” – the study of UFOs – within the next decade.

Dozens of groups interested in the flying saucers and other unidentified craft have already closed because of lack of interest and next week one of the country’s foremost organisations involved in UFO research is holding a conference to discuss whether the subject has any future.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 3

Devoted to Death – The Development of a Skeleton Saint

By on November 2, 2012 in News 3

Catrina Calavera

R. Andrew Chesnut, Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, and author of ‘Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint’, offers his personal observations on the development of her devotion in a fascinating photo essay hosted by Huffington Post:

“Having lived, studied and traveled in Mexico for almost 30 years, I can personally attest to the intimate and familiar nature of death in popular culture.

Long before Santa Muerte’s (Saint Death) public outing 11 years ago to the date (Nov. 1), images of death personified abounded. Most visibly, Catrina Calavera (Skeleton Dame), a high society woman depicted as a skeleton in fashionable early 20th-century attire, is omnipresent in Mexico. Created in 1913 by the great graphic artist and satirist, Jose Guadalupe Posada, La Catrina has curiously even made her way on to more than a few Santa Muerte altars.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 3

A Phantasmagoria of Scientific Jargon, Sleight of Hand and the Ol’ Scientistic Bait & Switch

By on October 29, 2012 in News 7

“The horrors that (Mr. Clarke) witnessed in the dreary laboratory were to a certain extent salutary; he was conscious of being involved in an affair not altogether reputable, and for many years afterwards he clung bravely to the commonplace, and rejected all occasions of occult investigation. Indeed, on some homeopathic principle, he for some time attended the seances of distinguished mediums, hoping that the clumsy tricks of these gentlemen would make him altogether disgusted with mysticism of every kind, but the remedy, though caustic, was not efficacious.”

- from The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen

A recent piece on LiveScience.com presents a study by Paul Brewer, a professor of communication at the University of Delaware, where participants were given one of four write ups, three dealt with a paranormal investigation, the fourth was on a different subject. One write up contained “science’y’ sounding terminology to describe the event, one couched it in metaphysical terminology, and the third, was the same as the first, only it contained a rebuttal from a science’y sounding authority.… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 7

What Do We Fear When We Fear Ghosts?

By on October 29, 2012 in News 6

When investigating the unknown, it’s best to leave obtuse hypotheses aside until all the evidence has been gathered. For many mysteries, this quest for truth can take centuries, for some even centuries mark only small intervals in our understanding, and in the midst of it all changes in fashionable intellectualism obscure and unmoor previous investigations.

Our search for answers into the nature of hauntings and apparitions has been a source of interest since the beginning of recorded history, with the familiar arguments of both skeptics and believers changing little over the years. Yet the experiences persist, and evoke the deeper levels of our existence, and the nature of our relationships with each other, with ourselves and even with the passing of time itself. Michael Newton explores some of these nuances in his review of A Natural History of the Ghosts by Roger Clarke:

“What do we fear when we fear ghosts? Certainly, they evoke the possibility of elemental entities hidden in the world, at least mischievous and even malevolent.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 6