More important is WHO is out there.

[mister_coffee]

Actions speak a lot louder than any disclaimers, methinks.

[Jingles]

No not obsessed but also KNOW there are but 2 genders.... PERIOD

[mister_coffee]

...
Not in today's society where folks can't decide if they are a he or a she regardless of whether they have the hotdog or the bun, safest thi g to call them is an it

You seem to have a pretty serious obsession with other people's genitals. Apparently included those of space aliens. To each their own, I guess...

[Jingles]

I

My sensitivity to 'what' rather than 'who' stems from, I think, my experience as a young lad of hearing a human being referred to as "it." Uncapitalized! And treated as an object rather than a person.

Which is, of course, racism. Right?

Not in today's society where folks can't decide if they are a he or a she regardless of whether they have the hotdog or the bun, safest thi g to call them is an it

[realoldtimer]

All rational explanations fail somehow when one has seen, in person, certain things.

OOOO, SPOOKY! But true.

In Southern Colorado, we sat and watched maneuvers by multiple aircraft, or spacecraft, that boggled our minds! The scientist among us speculated that the craft appear and disappear as they flit through a dimensional wall.

[mister_coffee]

Though that I heard one possible explanation is radar reflection tracking errors. But then you have the pilots visual commentary which indicate something not of this earth.

David, why are you trying to cover this up?

Well, I'm not.

I'm just pretty sure it isn't aliens. I am pretty sure that something important is happening and saying it is aliens just distracts us from what is probably going on. From what I have seen these mysterious objects are consistent with drones or radar-reflecting balloons being used as part of an intelligence operation.

One possibility is that it is a US intelligence operation, mostly aimed at China and Russia and convincing them to spend resources looking for aliens that aren't there.

The other possibility is that some near-peer country, most probably China, is doing this to get information on the performance and tactics we use with our high-tech sensors and communications systems.

This excellent and well-researched (if rather long) article sums it all up pretty well:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4 ... heyre-ufos

[mister_coffee]

Again, thermal and low-light optical cameras usually produce really fuzzy images. Those three "UFO" videos the Navy released were all thermal or low-light TV images, in both cases at extreme zoom.

Put another way, a decent industrial-grade thermal sensor with 640x480 resolution at 30fps costs about $3000. You can get a 5MP optical sensor for about $5 on Amazon.

[realoldtimer]

So many UFO videos -
and 'Strange Creature" vids, too
and then there's the multitude of "Sasquatch" & Bigfoot epics.

Lots of kb's, and MB's, and GB's of pictoral "evidence" with almost none in focus.

Doesn't anyone have a decent camera?

LOL

[mister_coffee]

Again, on the "UFO"s I am pretty sure they aren't aliens. Like all of us, I've seen the three short video clips showing very strange objects.

Low-light cameras and thermal cameras usually produce pretty uninteresting images to the human eye unless they are enhanced somehow. That enhancement software can easily produce artifacts and weird confusing effects in certain situations.

Similarly, having a camera with an extreme level of zoom (and corresponding very shallow depth of field) and some kind of object tracking software to keep the camera locked on an object of interest can produce the illusion that the object is making radical maneuvers or moving at a very high rate of speed even if the object is itself stationary. This can especially produce pretty bizarre results if the object you are tracking is inadvertently out of focus.

[PAL]

This is the best! Thanks.

[mister_coffee]

I think you are anthropomorphizing a great deal. Chances are any advanced alien species who ever visits us will be as far advanced over us as we are over, say, ants. So their concept of "self" and the like may well be correspondingly advanced.

It is also likely if we encounter an "alien" we will first encounter machines, but an advanced machine might appear to us as a biological.

[realoldtimer]

Maybe I don't think that UFOs are caused by aliens.

Theoretical discussion anyway

[mister_coffee]

Maybe I don't think that UFOs are caused by aliens.

[realoldtimer]

I was hoping to incite a discussion about whether an alien being is a 'who' rather than a 'what.'

I mean, a creature that can build vehicles that function as UFO's do must be intelligent and sentient.

Yes? No?

My sensitivity to 'what' rather than 'who' stems from, I think, my experience as a young lad of hearing a human being referred to as "it." Uncapitalized! And treated as an object rather than a person.

Which is, of course, racism. Right?

[realoldtimer]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pentago ... d=84753756