The planet Mercury, close-up

http://www.businessinsider.com/closest-photos-of-mercury-2015-2

John Podesta's "mea culpa" about UFOs

http://news.yahoo.com/outgoing-obama-adviser-john-podesta-s-biggest-regret-of-2014--keeping-america-in-the-dark-about-ufos-234149498.html

Nick Redfern's take on the Kodachrome slides hacker

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/02/spying-on-the-roswell-slides/

(I have a thesis, and supporting material of who the hacker, or one of them, was and it's a person I've excoriated here, a guy who's used my previous postings for his pseudo-name: Through a Glass Darkly, the St. Paul phase that I used in a posting and which my suspicioned hacker grabbed as he had with other comments and phrases I've used.)

RR

Madness and UFOs

There are unexplained things seen in the skies of Earth, and then there are odd incidents on the ground, associated with flying saucers or the UFO phenomenon.

The mixing of the two distinct kinds of “UFO observations” causes an irrational interpretation of both.

But one is open to physical investigation and the other is only open to psychological or neurological interpretation.

The first may be exampled by the 1952 Washington D.C. event(s) or the so-called Phoenix lights sightings or maybe the 2006 O’Hare airport sighting.

The second is exampled by the 1979 Robert Taylor episode in the Dechmont Woods area of Livingston, West Lothian, Scotland or the 1977 LaRubia incident which is detailed here:

http://www.theironskeptic.com/articles/octopus/octopus.htm

A raft of UFO-recounted incidents that bespeak psychological or neurological maladies is noted by Rob Morphy at Mysterious Universe:

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2011/03/close-encounters-of-the-weird-kind/

One aspect of the organic or mental disruption oriented episodes has never been looked into by UFO investigators as far as I know, and that’s the syphilitic possibility (paresis), where the “witness” may have the infection which affects the brain in varying stages, resulting in symptoms, illness, and sometimes death, as noted, inadvertently in such incidents as that of LaRubia, and causes “witnesses” to hallucinate.

One might scour UFO accounts for madness or hallucinations brought on by illnesses or brain diseases incurred by syphilis or cancer, even onset Alzheimer.

That no UFO investigator has the credentials for such evaluations, nor has taken the time to seek out colleagues who might have the expertise to look at UFO events caused by brain diseases or psychological maladies goes to the dearth of explanation for many UFO sightings listed in the literature.

RR