Books, books, books….

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The two Octopus books arrived today (from Amazon):

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Professor of Philosophy Peter Godfrey-Smith (Graduate Center City University, New York and professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Sydney)

The Soul of the Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Naturalist Sy Montgomery

And one of my Determinism purchases, The Illusion of Determinism: Why Free Will is Real and Causal by Edwin A Locke (Dean’s  Professor of Leadership and Motivation Emeritus at the R.H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. He is also a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and an advocate for Objectivism and Ayn Rand, one of my favorite thinkers, to the dismay of my pal Bryan Sentes)

Determinism or Free Will by Chapman Cohen is yet to come as is Paranormality: Why we believe the Impossible by Professor Richard Wiseman

The Octopus books have color photos – hooray! – and deal not only with the creatures but, as you can see, consciousness which impacts everything I’m discussing lately, especially the Reality/Simulation theses.

Determinism – which Bryan places at the beginning of his scholarly journey and has moved on from apparently – impacts the essence of the Reality/Simulation theses.

Paranormality is the overcoat of everything Nick Redfern wrties about and is the obsessional under-coating of reality for the judicious Paul Kimball and many of his buddies.

So, I’ll be inserting references to all these books in the hope that they help with the UFO topic, UFOs, being my compulsive entrance to things odd or queer. (Don’t read anything into that).

RR

Contact?

I'm watching the Science Channel's new UFO show Contact

It's a copy-cat version of Luis Elizondo's History Channel program "Unidentified" but with a woman added who asks the cootchie-coo questions" "How did it make you feel, that Tic-Tac encounter?"

And the show has an extraterrestrial patina, right off the bat.

The same encounters already milked by Unidentified, the 2004 Nimitz episode, are highlighted

But the hosts (the woman among them) went off on a tangent about sound as the radar operator in the Nimitz story mentioned that the Tic-Tac UFO seen by Airman Fravor didn't make a sound, but he, the radar operator, was aboard ship at his radar unit, so how could he hear a sound from something high above his ship and on the outside, while he was inside?

The woman is still oohing and ahhing.

(It's 9:35 p.m. and the "team" is still pursuing the sound angle. Why? Who cares?)

The woman, Sarah (who has a British accent to give her credibility?), and her partner, an Intel guy named Nick, are scouring the countryside to interview people the home hosts have found using Google and social media, people who've written they spotted UFOs.

Sarah and Nick have now found a hole in the ground -- a cave they say -- that they plan on checking out, without going inside it.

(The advertising break-ins are much more interesting: Sonic drive-in eating places, Coors Lite beer, Lexus automobiles, DQ Blizzards, et cetera.)

The show reminds me of the amateurish Alien Highway program that aired briefly on the Travel Channel recently.

I'm out.

RR

Roswell flying saucer can't be "reverse engineered" writes Tony Bragalia

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Anthony Bragalia's latest posting is interesting:

https://www.ufoexplorations.com/

But only if you follow the comedian maxim: Buy the premise and you buy the bit.

Tony is a Roswell devotee, and he thinks, as do many others, that a flying saucer crashed near Roswell in 1947. He's mustered much information to support that view, and he's done so, again, with his newest effort linked above.

You know my view(s) about UFOs from outer space, and I have no idea what really happened in and around Roswell in 1947....maybe a space ship did crash there, but I find the idea awfully iffy.

First off, an advanced species would have to be very lucky or ingenious to discover this "pale blue dot" [Sagan] in the outer reaches of our Galaxy and even more remote, impossibly remote, if one considers Earth in the context of the Universe as a whole.

Moreover, if a space ship from afar could make it here, through all the cosmic maelstrom, I can't imagine that sturdy, bountiful spacecraft losing control over a relatively docile desert.

And reading Tony's detailed account of the spacecraft, as examined by the military-industrial complex, one will be struck by how exotic and wonderful the machine allegedly is; it's a marvelous contraption, Tony tells us, outside the purview of we puny humans, and it must have been built by an advanced species so far ahead of us in technology and science that we can never hope to decipher its inner workings.

Nonetheless, Roswell believers will be hyped by Tony's rumination.

As for me, I enjoy Tony's ingenious efforts, but I'm not buying the premise.

RR