Uncovering Aliens Debuts Tonight in Special Sneak Preview on Animal Planet!

Post by Mike Bara.

"Uncovering Aliens" to Debut on Animal Planet Next Sunday!



Next Sunday, December 15th, 2013 catch a special "sneak preview" of my new TV show "Uncovering Aliens" on Animal Planet! The show will air at 11PM Eastern and Pacific time right after a new episode of Finding Bigfoot. Check your local listings because it's showing twice on my local cable system.



http://animal.discovery.com/tv-shows/tv-schedule.htm

If you like the show, be sure to email the network and let them know!

Who Really Killed JFK? - Part II

This is the 2nd in a two-part series about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22nd, 1963. It contains excerpts from the book I co-authored with Richard C. Hoagland, Dark Mission - The Secret History of NASA.

 

 

Part II - The Third Rail of Conspiracy Theories

Whenever anyone brings up that fateful day in Dallas, November 22, 1963, and includes it in any dialog on any other subject, then that subject immediately comes under scorn and ridicule. Numerous documentaries and dramatizations like the recent "Killing Kennedy" will discuss some aspects of the conspiracy theories, but rarely do they present the whole picture or even the best evidence that there was a 2nd shooter that morning in Dealey Plaza. If you bring the Kennedy assassination into the conversation, you’d better be ready to have half the audience throw the rest of your ideas on to the trash heap of history. The Kennedy assassination is—to use a common political axiom—the “third rail” of conspiracy theories.

It is for this reason that we reluctantly began to look at the specific events of that  November morning in Dealey Plaza. But we also felt compelled to review the facts surrounding John F. Kennedy’s murder because so much of what we had already uncovered pointed to a conspiracy to remove him from office.

 

 

Who Really Killed JFK? - Part I of II

This is the first in a 2 part series about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22nd, 1963. It contains excerpts from the book I co-authored with Richard C. Hoagland, Dark Mission - The Secret History of NASA.



Who's the Giant Chair For?

In the course of researching some new posts for this week on the Kennedy assassination, I found this image of John F. Kennedy's address to the U.N. on September 20th, 1963. What struck me was the bizarre sight of a hugely oversized empty chair next to the podium. If you look at it and compare the scale to Kennedy himself (who is standing on an elevated lectern) it is obvious that the chair is about twice the normal size and far too big for an average height human to sit in comfortably. It looks in fact like it was made for someone at least 8-10 feet tall, if not taller.

Unless Wilt Chamberlin was planning to attend Kennedy's speech on U.S./Soviet space cooperation, who was this empty chair symbolically for? And who sits in it under normal circumstances? The U.N. delegate from Nibiru?

Maybe Enki was busy that day.

Anyway, if anybody has any further information on the symbolic meaning of the empty Annunaki-sized chair, I'd be interested in seeing it. For now, it's just plain weird.

UPDATE: This video shows that the chair isn't quite as outsized as I first thought. Does look like the arms and back are quite high though. Still don't know what the symbolism of the empty chair is supposed to be though.



No Virgina, It's Not an Alien Base on the Moon...

Screen capture from Disney's "Man and the Moon," first broadcast in 1956.

Over the past few weeks I've come across the image above numerous times with the caption "Alien Base Discovered on the Moon!" or something similar attached to it. This has amused me a great deal, because it is NOT a picture of an alien base on the Moon -- it's a screen capture from a 1956 Disney TV film called "Man and the Moon." How do I know this? Well, for starters, it usually has the Disney Channel watermark in the lower right-hand corner, and  beyond that, I know for one simple reason: It's my screen capture.

Originally published in a piece I wrote for Richard Hoagland's Enterprise Mission web site called "Tetrahedrons, Faces on Mars, Exploding Planets, Hyperdimensional Physics -- and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet?!", it was captured with a crude device called a "Snappy" back in 2000, when the story was first published.

 

Now, don't get me wrong. There are gobs of alien bases on the Moon, many of which I document in my recent book Ancient Aliens on the Moon, but this is isn't one of them.



The Village Idiot Gets it Wrong Again...

For the last several years, a person Richard C. Hoagland and I not so affectionately refer to as the "Village Idiot" has tried to gain attention for himself by attacking literally everything we do. No matter what the source or medium, he tries to take issue with what we say or propose, usually by arguing some obscure or immaterial point, or even redefining what we say and then trying to make us defend statements we never made.

Every so often, just for the sake of accuracy, I find it necessary to respond to these idiotic claims in some public way. Not to give him and his sycophants the attention they crave, but just for the record. His recent assertions about a passage in Dark Mission are just the latest in a long line of absurdities that he has raised.

In that volume, we asserted that the Apollo 10 Lunar Module, nicknamed Snoopy, was fully capable of landing on the lunar surface, and that the only reason it did not was because NASA short fueled the vehicle to prevent it from doing so. Obviously, if the real reason for going to the Moon was to beat the Soviets, as is publically claimed by NASA historians, there is no logical reason why the first mission capable of making the landing should not have done so. As we put it in Dark Mission:

"With all of the primary technical and mission planning components having been tested and proven out, the next mission was a full-up dress rehearsal for Apollo 11. Launched on May 18, 1969, Apollo 10 acted as a pathfinder for Apollo 11’s “Eagle,” following the same descent path that Apollo 11 would two months later. Eventually, Thomas P. Stafford piloted Snoopy to within 8.4 miles of the lunar surface (about 44,000 feet), prompting Lunar Module Pilot Gene Cernan to comment ominously; “Man, we’s getting down among them.”

Given that their altitude was nearly 50,000 feet above the lunar surface, we can’t help but wonder what Cernan was talking about. At that altitude, lunar surface features, even mountains, would be obscure and far away. However, given where Stafford and Cernan were at that moment, passing through Sinus Medii and heading on toward Mare Smythii, the only thing they could have been “down among” – at 50,000 feet – would be Hoagland’s theorized miles-high glass domes. Undeniably, the location and the altitude would be correct for that to be what Cernan was talking about.

This bizarre comment also raises the other strangely incongruent aspect of Apollo10; while the spacecraft was theoretically fully capable of landing on the Moon, inexplicably, it was not given the capability to do so.

Not only was the Mission denied the fuel to make a safe lunar landing (the tanks on-board were literally only half-filled), but the LM “Snoopy” was a crippled version of the “real” vehicle, unable to physically land on the lunar surface.

Politically, this really makes no sense.

Still in a fierce race with the Soviet Union to be the first to land a man on the Moon, Apollo 10 had everything necessary to accomplish this long sought after political goal – except the tools to do so. The Saturn V, the LM and the CSM had all been tested on previous missions, and the NASA long-distance (lunar) communications network was tested on Apollo 8. There was no practical, canonical reason not to land Apollo 10. With only two more shots at making the goal before Kennedy’s “end of the decade,” the question is, why wait?

As he delved ever deeper into the arcane, Egyptian mysteries surrounding these supposedly secular, “scientific and engineering” NASA missions, Hoagland finally found his answer:

Because it wasn’t “time” yet.

It finally occurred to Hoagland that there had to be a “hidden reason”—a ceremonial reason quite likely—why Apollo 10 was prevented from carrying out the Mission it was so capable of accomplishing, and thus achieving Kennedy’s Goal with plenty of margin for error if something went wrong.

Perhaps it had something to do with the date of July 20th, or the project patch, the odd “communion ceremony,” or maybe (as he found out with Alan Shepard and America’s first manned sub-orbital flight, back in 1961 …) the men themselves -- Armstrong and Aldrin – had, for some reason, been pre-selected.

Or maybe, it was all of those things."

In an email to me last summer, the Village Idiot made the following assertion:
 
"On p. 280 of your book Dark Mission, discussing the Apollo 10 mission, you write of the Apollo 10 Lunar Module "while the spacecraft was theoretically fully capable of landing on the moon, inexplicably, it was not given the capability to do so."

There is, in fact, nothing inexplicable about this. Snoopy was too heavy -- or, to be strictly accurate, would have been too heavy if it had been fully fueled. Please see the Apollo 10 Press Kit p. 44.

Will you be able to issue a retraction?"

Again, I get something like this from him or his fellow idiots at least once a week. As always, it is simply wrong on a whole series of levels.
 
First of all, there is nothing on page 44 of the Apollo 10 press kit that says anything about the Lunar Module Snoopy being "too heavy" to either land on or take off from the lunar surface. This is a complete fabrication of the Village Idiot.



Second, the only weight that matters in determining the capability of Snoopy to land safely on the lunar surface is the dry weight of the ASCENT STAGE, as that is the only relevant factor (in terms of weight) in determining the safety of a successful liftoff from the lunar surface. As you can see from the charts below, "Snoopy's" Ascent Stage was actually LIGHTER than "Eagle's," putting the lie to his whole idiotic thesis and meaning that there was no reason that "Snoopy" could not have successfully landed and lifted off again from the lunar surface, just as "Eagle" did. All of the excess weight was in the descent stage, which if anything, probably makes for a lower center of gravity and a more stable vehicle. But I digress.

The 2nd chart shows that "Snoopy's" weight was not excessive in any way, shape or form. While overall with the Ascent/Descent stages joined for the landing it was slightly heavier than "Eagle" by a meager 197 pounds (2%), it was still lighter than the Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 LM's. In fact, the Apollo 17 LM, "Challenger," outweighed "Snoopy" by over 1,400 pounds, mostly due to the Lunar Rover.

 

 

What this means is that Snoopy was easily within every design\performance parameter necessary for a successful landing on the Moon and return to orbit. The only reason that didn't happen was because NASA short fueled it on purpose. This makes no sense if the real reason for going to the Moon was the political race with the Soviets. Apollo 10 could have easily landed and returned safely. But as we know, and as Mr. Hoagland and I put in the book, "It wasn't time yet."

If these simple facts aren't enough, let's just go to the source, shall we? Apollo 10 Lunar Module pilot Gene Cernan is unequivocal in stating that NASA took special precautions to assure that Apollo 10 did not land on the lunar surface:

Apollo 10 Lunar Module pilot Gene Cernan

“A lot of people thought about the kind of people we were: 'Don't give those guys an opportunity to land, 'cause they might!' So the ascent module, the part we lifted off the lunar surface with, was short-fueled. The fuel tanks weren't full. So had we literally tried to land on the Moon, we couldn't have gotten off.”

-- Source: Nelson, Craig (2009). Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-02103-1.

So once again, the Village Idiot is proven completely wrong. Hopefully, we can all take his (and his associates) similar claims with the gigantic grain of salt they deserve from here on out.

 

 

Signed Copies of Ancient Aliens on Mars Now Available



If you would like a signed or personalized copy of any of my books, send $25.00 via Paypal to the email address mike.bara.mgmt@gmail.com for The Choice, Ancient Aliens on the Moon or Ancient Aliens on Mars.  Copies of Dark Mission are $35.

It will be shipped to you in a few days. Dark Mission takes a bit longer because of availability.

Excerpt From the Forward to My New Book Ancient Aliens on Mars

The following is an excerpt from the Forward to my new book "Ancient Aliens on Mars" in which I present new information about the controversial "Daedalus Ziggurat" from my previous book, Ancient Aliens on the Moon.



In June of 2013, one of Stuart Robbins' sycophants on the web went searching for the origin of as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg in a vain effort to prove that I had somehow lied about its origins. In the course of doing so, he convinced himself that he had “caught” me in a lie/mistake, and eagerly sent an email to my manager gloating over it. In fact, what he discovered only reinforced my arguments that as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg came from a scan of an analog print which had been in this person’s family for years, and in the process he managed to completely throw Stuart (PS4NASA) under the bus and prove him wrong. The whole thing was really quite amusing.

Using the internet archive tool, this troubled individual (he sends me emails on an almost daily basis accusing me of being a “liar” and various other things) went to an archived website of an early anomaly hunter named Terry James, aka “KK Samurai.” Now, I knew of “KK Samurai” from the late 90’s and frequently enjoyed his finds and articles. When I had first seen the Daedalus Ziggurat while doing research for Ancient Aliens on the Moon, I thought it looked familiar but couldn’t place it. It was suggested that the original source might have been “KK Samurai,” but I expressed doubts about this because he always watermarked his discoveries with a “KK” symbol in the lower right hand corner, and “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” did not have such a watermark.

This sycophant (and his sycophants) also mocked Terry James as a “known hoaxer” (which I knew he wasn’t), primarily because he was a Christian, according to them. But when they suddenly thought they “had” something on me, they withdrew these charges quickly.

What they found were some images on Terry James’ archived website that absolutely verified what “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” showed, and appeared to be made from the same source file. I went in and pulled down the images myself to make sure there was no funny business with altering of the images by the sycophant.
 

 

Image retrieved from the Internet Archive showing the Daedalus Ziggurat, first posted in 1999-2000 by Terry James, aka “KK Samurai.” Note “KK” watermark in lower right.

In looking over the archived website I saw that in addition to first posting the image, Terry James also had done some colorization work on it. He also posted images showing that author Richard Coombs had made an initial comparison to the Ziggurat at Ur in Iraq, identical to the comparison I made years later in Ancient Aliens on the Moon without even knowing about Terry’s pages or Richard’s analysis.

Comparison of the Daedalus Ziggurat with the Ziggurat at Ur by Richard Coombs.

But the most critical piece of information from the website came from 1999, where Terry James thanked “Frank,” for giving him the image.  In fact, in the email from the sycophant, he identified the source of the image as a man named Frank Gault:

“The actual source of the image was a scan done by Frank Gault, which is why in the original presentation you see ‘Thanks to Frank....’ Gault’s father was ex-NASA, and gave his son a large collection of Apollo-era 10x8 photo-prints, perhaps similar to Ken Johnston's collection…”

After a quick perusal of the archived KK Samurai website, I was able to confirm most of this information. This sycophant apparently thought he “got” me because of my previously expressed doubts that Terry James was the source of the image I had originally given to Richard Hoagland (as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg). In fact, what his digging actually does is to throw Stuart (PS4NASA) Robbins completely under the bus.

As I established earlier in this forward, Stuart (PS4NASA) has unequivocally argued that “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” was made from the digital NASA source file “5564.jpg.” I have counter-argued that “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” was scanned from an analog original Apollo era print— a fact now confirmed by the sycophant. So this Village Idiot has now categorically confirmed that I was right all along and Dr. Stuart (PS4NASA) Robbins was and is categorically wrong. With friends like these, Stuart (PS4NASA)…

But wait, wasn’t I wrong about KK Samurai/Terry James not being the source of “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg?” Doesn’t that make me equally in error?

Well no. “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg”obviously didn’t come from Terry James’ website at all. If it did, it would have his “KK” watermark on it, just like ALL of the images of the Daedalus Ziggurat from his website do. Since “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” doesn’t have this watermark, that must mean it comes from another source, possibly Frank Gault himself or his father and his collection of original, first-generation NASA 8 x 10 prints. Either that, or it came from someone who had access to Gault’s scans or someone Terry had passed the image to in the past and maybe just forgotten about.

as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg (L) and the version from Terry James website (R). Note that the “KK” watermark does not appear on “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” and it is rotated and cropped differently.

So in one fell swoop, not only has Stuart’s (PS4NASA) sycophant failed to prove that “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” came from Terry James website, he has by his own Plain Statement of Fact proven that it was not conjured up from NASA’s tampered digital image “5564.jpg,” as Stuart Robbins (PS4NASA) has categorically declared.

Thanks for the help there buddy. But I bet you’re off Stuart’s (PS4NASA) Christmas card list now.

“as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” and Terry James’ enhancement from the archived “KK Samurai” website. “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” rotated to match alignment.

But more important is what Terry’s version of the Ziggurat actually shows. First, in comparing “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” to Terry’s original work from his website in 1999, it is plain to see that all the same features appear in both. The left side and rear walls, the walled enclosure for the “temple,” the square temple itself along with the entrance ramp and the dome on top. The left wall may be brighter and more defined in “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg,” but that may simply be because whoever enhanced it used a different technique than Terry James did. This is reinforced by the fact that the photographic glue residue overlays the top of the left wall, an impossibility if the wall had been “drawn-in” after scanning, as Stuart (PS4NASA) and the sycophants have argued (see enhancement above).

Shortly after this exchange, Terry James himself showed up on the sycophant’s website and called me and Mr. Hoagland out for not giving him credit for the Ziggurat. I later learned that he had apparently not actually seen the “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” image when he made this declaration. Fortunately, he left his email on the blog post, so I wrote to him explaining the chain of custody of “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” and why he hadn’t been credited in Ancient Aliens on the Moon. I quickly got a reply, and we began a cordial email exchange. He made several major points in these emails:

“I can assure you I am neither a hoaxer or a Christian and yes I did find this pyramid on a very large scan of a photo sent to me by Frank Gault. I am also very certain that Frank did not mess with that scan or any of the many other scans he sent me… I also noticed that many of the lunar scans that Frank sent me were not found in the NASA public archive. I also noticed that some of the available images in the public archive had features removed or brushed out that were very clean in Franks scans.”

He also stated that he didn’t always watermark his images, although all of the Ziggurat images on the archived site do have one. So “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” could still have originated with him or Frank Gault:

“I should (also) point out that I didn't always put my watermark on my images. I often just signed them or didn't mark them at all. Sometimes I just inserted my name into the image file. And on occasion I would send someone a clip of my raw data provided they gave me credit for it. So it is probable that I sent out a clip of the pyramid to someone who renamed the file and used it. Also keep in mind that Frank may have also sent some of the data to someone else without my knowledge. After all he did have the scanned data on file.”

Then, a second critic/attack dog that frequently collaborates with sycophant #1 sent an email claiming that Terry James had in fact admitted to “faking” the Ziggurat image. “Oh and isn't it great that Terry James aka KKsamurai has shown up. You know..., the guy who faked the ziggurat. He admitted he created it, still has the original, and has called out you and Mike as thieves and liars. Mike even dedicated almost an entire chapter to this fake.” Knowing all of these statements to be false, I passed the email along to Terry, who quickly replied: “I've been there before. I did not fake that ziggurat. He’s basing his position on a public archive image whereas I have real first generation data from a NASA lunar scientist. It’s not worth arguing.  I should also say I've found a lot of very interesting data on more interesting stuff… I can't help but say I have a lot more data yet unrevealed and none of it is faked. In fact most of it proves that NASA has withheld. Worse, they've edited many lunar images to hide the truth from the general public.”

In other words, Terry James reinforced that not only are the public archives which Stuart (PS4NASA) and the sycophants are so dependent on not complete, he also agreed with me that they have been altered from their original form when compared to first generation photographic prints. When I informed Terry James that I was going to cover all this in the Forward to my new book, he kindly offered to send me his original scan sourced from Frank Gault, and also confirmed that “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” is NOT an image from his site, as claimed by sycophant #1. “Mike. If you are putting this in a book you need data from the original scan… The original scan is darker. To lighten something for the sake of vision and perception is OK provided you give them the original data.”

About a week later, I received a thumb-drive with Terry’s original scan, a GIF file named “Apollo-AS11-38-5564.gif.” The image has pixel dimensions of 1500 x 1138 at 72 DPI, making for an on disk file size of 1.62MB and a document size of 20.833 inches in width and a height of 15.806 inches. In other words, there’s plenty of data well above the “limits of resolution” with which to determine the authenticity of the Ziggurat as an artificial structure. And that’s exactly what it does.

 

Ziggurat image “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” (L) alongside Terry James’ raw original (R).

In comparing “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” with Frank Gault/Terry James’ original scan, all the major features are again confirmed. The front wedge shaped buttresses, the left and rear walls, the entire walled enclosure, the square “temple” structure, the entrance ramp, the “windows” on the side, the dome on top— all of it. With a little enhancement work, it becomes even clearer.

What Terry’s original scan shows is that all of my original speculations about the origins of “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” are verified— it did in fact come from a first generation photographic print in the personal collection of a former NASA employee, whether that person is Frank Gault’s father or another source. It also confirms that the current NASA version “5564.jpg,” in total contrast to the claims of Stuart (PS4NASA) Robbins, is an overt fake that had the Ziggurat removed in a rather sloppy and obvious paint-over. Given this, it is now safe to assume that ALL NASA digital imagery is almost certainly compromised, as Terry has stated unequivocally in his emails.

 

Comparison of Frank Gault/Terry James scan of the Ziggurat, and NASA scan “5564.jpg,”— an obvious fake.

So, just to quickly recap:

1. There is not less noise in the NASA image “5564.jpg” than in the Ziggurat image “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg.” What Stuart (PS4NASA) thinks is "noise" is actually photo-album residue marks on the first-generation photographic print that “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” was scanned from.

2. Stuart's (PS4NASA) assumption that “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” was therefore modified after NASA's “5564.jpg” and by his faulty reasoning manufactured from it in Photoshop or a similar program is therefore falsified.

3. "as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg" shows every indication of being scanned from an early if not first-generation photographic print, and therefore has an earlier derivation than "5564.jpg." This is proven out by the research of Stuart’s (PS4NASA) own fans.

4. Terry James aka “KK Samurai” has now produced an original scan of a first-generation photographic print in the possession of Frank Gault, the son of a former NASA lunar scientist who obtained the photo directly from NASA. It shows that “as1120pyramid20smallue2.jpg” is far closer if not identical to the original NASA photograph AS11-38-5564. “5564.jpg” is therefore proven to be a fake digital image, at least as far as the Ziggurat is concerned.

On Coast to Coast AM with George Noory Tonight



Just a quick reminder I will be appearing on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory tonight from 10PM-2AM Pacific. We will be discussing my new book, Ancient Aliens on Mars, wrapping up some loose ends from Ancient Aliens on the Moon, and I will have a special announcement in the first hour! Be sure to tune in!

Coast to Coast AM

There is no Such Thing as Pareidolia

 

In recent years, as better and better images of the Face on Mars and other anomalies on the Red Planet have become increasingly recognized as artificial, NASA and NASA backed debunkers have retrenched and attempted to hide behind a non-existent limitation of human perception they call "pareidolia." According to the debunker crowd, pareidolia is a supposed human tendency to recognize facial patterns where none actually exist. This mythical, made-up tendency has no basis in fact, has never been written up or published in any scientific or medical journal, and has failed to meet even the most basic standards of a true medical or psychological disorder.

 



Original, unprocessed image of the Face on Mars (L) and the infamous "Catbox" fraud (R)

This does not stop it from being cited on a regular basis by the debunker crowd, who hail it as the be-all end-all answer to the question of whether the Face is artificial. In articles on the subject, they invariably show unprocessed or outright fabricated images of the Face -- like the infamous Catbox "enhancement" of the 1998 Mars Global Surveyor Face image. Never do they use the far more accurate and more directly overhead views, of which there are now many.

 



The Face on Mars as seen by Viking (L) Mars Odyssey 2001 (C) and ESA's Mars Express (R) 

The reason for this is simply that in the debate about the Face and other anomalies at Cydonia, they haven't a leg to stand on. As my next book Ancient Aliens on Mars will reveal, the evidence that the Face and other pyramidal objects at Cydonia are artificial is overwhelming. Given this, in recent years it has now become de rigueur to redefine "pareidolia" to be a perceptual disorder whereby humans supposedly simply see patterns where none exist. This is akin to the man-made Global Warming alarmist crowd no longer using that term but instead  citing the generic "climate change" as the basis for their socialist environmental proposals. After 15 years of cooling and several studies that link global temperatures to solar activity (duh) their whole premise has been falsified. The same applies to "pareidolia."

 

In fact, the depth of the lie that is "pareidolia" can easily be found by simply tracing the word's origins. It is nothing but  a phony, pseudo-scientific term invented in 1994 by a UFO debunker named Steven Goldstein in the June 22nd, 1994 edition of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. This alone should tell you all you need to know about its credibility in the realm of ideas. Despite a complete lack of any valid scientific studies on the supposed “phenomenon,” it is still commonly cited by debunkers like James Oberg and Phil “Dr. Phil” Plait to give an academic air to their knee-jerk dismissal of the Cydonia anomalies. Some of these debunkers even resort to claiming that articles written about "pareidolia" by other debunkers are some sort of paper trail proving the phenomenon has a publishing pedigree. But the simple fact is no such human tendency exists.

 

At all.

 



There is however another very real human tendency that unlike the mythical “pareidolia,” is actually an extremely well-documented and medically established disorder— Prosopagnosia. Simply put, Prosopagnosia is a brain disorder that renders the poor souls that have it completely unable to recognize faces when they see them. According to some medical studies, as much as 2.5% of the human population may suffer from this disorder, and apparently a disproportionate number of those afflicted have found jobs in the NASA planetary science community.

So the next time some NASA loving troll tries to tell you the Face on Mars is just all in your head, ask him to show you one medical paper -- even one -- which has studied the supposed phenomena of "pareidolia." Then hit them back with Prosopagnosia.

Within the next sentence or two I guarantee you they will call you a "conspiracy theorist" or cite their academic credentials.

 

Notes:

http://www.wordspy.com/words/pareidolia.asp

UPDATE 10/22/2013:

Some of my more obsessive critics have sent me emails indicating that Stuart Robbins has responded by pointing to a reference in a journal from 1867. I happen to know this reference was fed to Robbins by the Village Idiot, because he sent it to me months ago. It is nothing but a single word in a 600 page document from 1867 and contains no information about any medical studies which establish the existence of "pareidolia," since there never have been any. In any event, if this reference is genuine, then their problem is with the Wordspy web site, and I'd suggest they send them a note to correct their page. All other references seem to point to the Steven Goldstein quote as the origin for the word's use in the common language. It is also clear from reading the two descriptions that the word may even have had a different meaning in the 1867 reference than it does as used by Goldstein the debunker.

They've also attempted to claim that 3 obscure papers they mined on the internet use the word “pareidolia,” in their abstracts, and that this somehow proves me wrong, and that “pareidolia.” is a real, established medical condition. In a comment authored by "James Concannon" (who I think is actually the Village Idiot working under a pseudonym, a practice he has admitted to) they claim that I said that "no scientific or medical literature exists authenticating pareidolia."

First of all, "James Concannon," if he even exists, has sexually harassed numerous female Facebook friends of mine in the last several years, sending them harassing message after harassing message. At least 5 women had to block him to get it to stop. This is par for the course for both the Village Idiot and the distinguished Dr. Robbins, both of whom have proven time and again what complete creeps they are by pretending to be other people. They do this to keep people from realizing how mentally disordered they are, and to make their numbers look far greater than they actually are.

But I digress. What I said above about “pareidolia” is crystal clear. "This mythical, made-up tendency has no basis in fact, has never been written up or published in any scientific or medical journal, and has failed to meet even the most basic standards of a true medical or psychological disorder."

The 3 papers cited, which I was aware of when I wrote this post, do nothing to make me change or retract this claim. None of them is a medical study that establishes that there is an actual medical condition which causes people to see things that aren't there or don't exist. All they do is make reference to the word.

The first paper, published in 2009, assumes that “pareidolia” exists and specifically links it to facial recognition only. In reality, the paper is not about “pareidolia" at all, but only measures the speed of cognitive responses to visual stimuli, and nothing more. If the study had been done prior to Goldstein's 1994 reference and the debunkers community repeated use of it with regards to the Face on Mars, the word probably wouldn't even appear in the abstract. In any event, the paper is not a study of “pareidolia,” but merely the speed of brain function. The paper itself only uses the word "pareidolia" twice, and CANNOT EVEN CITE A SINGLE MEDICAL/SCIENTIFIC STUDY pointing to its existence.

The second paper, a tiny Japanese study published in 2012, tests patients with a specific kind of dementia -- who already hallucinate -- for hallucinations. It again uses the word “pareidolia,” but likewise cannot cite a single study verifying the existence of such a condition. In essence all it does is substitute the word “pareidolia” for "hallucination."

The third paper, published in 2009 in Brazil is available only in abstract form and like the other two, assumes that “pareidolia” exists, but once again does not cite even  a single study confirming that.

It's obvious that the Village Idiot simply went to the PubMed.gov website and searched for the term “pareidolia.” All he could find were a pathetic 3 results, none of which is a study of the actual alleged "phenomenon." There is a 4th result, but the paper is in Spanish and the abstract is so off the wall that they must have decided not to cite for fear of embarrassment.

What this reinforces is that as I have asserted, there is no medically established disorder called “pareidolia.” If there were, there would be dozens of studies pointing to it and identifying its origins, causes, and treatment. Legitimate medical/psychological conditions like Prosopagnosia have such medical pedigrees. In fact, Prosopagnosia turns up an impressive 686 papers and studies from the same web site. The fact that all of the “pareidolia”papers were written after Steven Goldstein coined (or re-coined) the phrase in 1994 indicates they wouldn't even be using the term if it hadn't found its way into the debunkers vernacular in the first place.

So all they have done in reality is to further prove my original point: The supposed phenomenon of “pareidolia” is an Urban Myth perpetrated if not created by the debunkers, and nothing more.

Notes:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2713437/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12487959

 

NASA's Dr. Stuart Robbins - The Gift That Keeps on Giving - Part V

In the final section of his attack piece, Stuart comes to a claim that is so idiotic, so devoid of fact or even a semblance of reality that it has actually left me speechless for years. He claims that -- based on upon the following factually correct statement -- that I somehow don't know what an ellipse is:



"On page 34 of The Choice, Bara states: 'Many of the planet’s orbits, which … should be perfectly circular by now, are highly elliptical. In fact, Mars’s orbit is so eccentric that its distance from Earth goes from 34 million miles at its closest to 249 million miles at its greatest.'”

This simple and factually correct statement has been distorted for years by my critics and touted as an "error" in The Choice. How anyone can somehow derive from this that I don't know what an ellipse is, how it's calculated or how it relates to Mars' orbital eccentricity is beyond comprehension.

Stuart puts it thusly: "It seems fitting that the section after I talk about Bara’s claim that is summarized as “scientists don’t know anything,” that I should come to this last one about ellipses that shows Bara knows less than the average middle school geometry student. It’s really simply incredibly stupid of Mike to claim that Mars’ orbit is highly eccentric because it comes as close as about 0.38 A.U. (“astronomical unit” is the distance between the sun and Earth) but goes as far as 2.67 A.U. (Actually, in fairness, the numbers that he gives equate to 0.37 A.U. and 2.68 A.U.; he and I rounded slightly differently.) Therefore it’s an eccentric orbit that’s evidence for his fission model of solar system formation."

For the record, the word "ellipse" doesn't even appear in my book The Choice, so how that statement can be distorted into a debate about ellipses is beyond me. Maybe I need a Ph.D. from Costco like yours to understand, Stuart. Second, the statement "Mars’s orbit is so eccentric that its distance from Earth goes from 34 million miles at its closest to 249 million miles at its greatest” is FACTUALLY CORRECT. (This page has lots of pictures. Maybe they can help you understand how all this orbital mechanics stuff works.) Third, I have NEVER claimed--on Coast to Coast AM that night or at any other time-- that Mars' orbital eccentricity is "evidence for his (sic) fission model of solar system formation." As I have stated repeatedly, the Solar Fission theory of planetary formation is Dr. Van Flandern's (Ph.D., Astronomy, Yale) theory, not mine. The eccentricity of Mars' orbit is cited in The Choice and elsewhere as evidence that Mars was once in orbit around a "super Earth" Van Flandern named Planet V, which was destroyed sometime in the past. It has nothing to do with the Solar fission theory. Fourth, there is nothing -- NOTHING -- in the statement "Mars’s orbit is so eccentric that its distance from Earth goes from 34 million miles at its closest to 249 million miles at its greatest" that implies, in the most tortuous, ancillary way, that I am somehow calculating orbital eccentricity from Earth rather than the Sun. you have to be a complete moron to claim that it does.

So congratulations on once again getting your argument completely wrong, Stuwie. I guess getting facts straight is low priority for you, since you never seem to be able to do it.

Now, let's examine your statement that "It’s really simply incredibly stupid of Mike to claim that Mars’ orbit is highly eccentric."

Oh really?

Like most debunkers, Stuart uses numbers deceptively to try and make his point. Several of his sycophants have tried to make the same claim that Mars's orbit really isn't so eccentric. But when you graph the numbers, it becomes obvious just how out of a nominal range Mars' orbit really is. 

 

 

Excluding Pluto, which is no longer considered a planet, Mars orbit is the 2nd most elliptical of all the "planets." You can see from the graph that it is far more eccentric than Earth's, exactly as I characterized it. Put another way, Earth’s relative distance to the Sun varies by only about 3.1 million miles in the course of one orbit (year). Mars' orbit, by contrast, varies by as much as 26.5 million miles over the course of a Martian year. Obviously, Mars' orbit is more eccentric by an order of magnitude. How Stuart fails to grasp this I do not know. Maybe he's just stupid.

Not satisfied with getting all of that wrong, Stuart goes on to chastise me for something I never said, and an argument I never made:

"The problem here, for those who didn’t listen to the podcast or don’t remember their middle school geometry is that you measure the long and short axis of an ellipse from the center of the ellipse. Not some crackpot arbitrary point inside or outside of it. In this case, the sun is one of the foci of the ellipse that is Mars’ orbit. The sun is one of the foci of ALL solar system objects that are in orbit. Earth is not. Measuring your axes from Earth is just stupid. It’s made up. It makes no sense. It has to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever talked about on this blog, and that’s saying a lot."

First, I agree that measuring orbital eccentricity from Earth would be stupid. About as stupid as claiming that a 2 kilometer wide Ziggurat on the Moon appears on an MRO image strip that actually misses it by a mile or so or using Wikipedia to attack the research of a Nobel prize winner. But I digress. Please show me where, at any time, I have EVER claimed that orbital eccentricity is calculated from Earth. Ever. In any forum. The factually correct statement you cite ("Mars’s orbit is so eccentric that its distance from Earth goes from 34 million miles at its closest to 249 million miles at its greatest") as the basis for your absurd claim says nothing of the kind. Only a retard would conclude that it did.

It takes a special kind of stupid to even make such a claim, completely without evidence. But you have to be even more "special" to compound your fantasy by creating a fake graphic to illustrate your point.

 

But Stuart did it.

 

NOT Bara's explanation of Eccentricity

 

Also lost in all of this nonsense is that fact that even if he were right, and this was an "error" on my part, or that I was the one who was "incredibly stupid" as opposed to him, it still wouldn't matter. the fact is, this whole question of eccentricity is completely immaterial to the arguments, conclusions or deductions in The Choice. It was merely a little factoid I was tossing out to make a minor, off-camber point. Even if Stuart was right, which he isn't, it would not change one single thing about the books' conclusions.

That's what debunkers, as opposed to true skeptics, do. They ignore the big stuff and try to argue the minutiae. And Stuart, as I've continually demonstrated, can't even do that right. 

But if that wasn't enough, just to prove what a complete creep he is, Stuart was actually dumb enough to try and "catch" me at making an incorrect statement about ellipses and orbital eccentricity.

 



On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 10:22 AM, I got an email from an anonymous address from somebody claiming to be "Shawn."

 

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 10:22 AM, Nho Buddy <nhobuddy@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Dear Michael,

I found out about you after being referred by someone to a post of yours on Richard Hoagland's website.  I was looking for some information about you and found a blog post by an astrophysicist who critiqued some of your claims (http://pseudoastro.wordpress.com/tag/mike-bara/).

Without going into everything else because I'm not sure I really understand all of his arguments, I do understand geometry, and I'm trying to determine if his claim about what you said about Mars' eccentricity is correct.  You can find what he says about it in his next-to-last section on "Ellipses in Planetary Orbits," or by going to http://podcast.sjrdesign.net/images/010_eccentricity_bara.jpg versus http://podcast.sjrdesign.net/images/010_eccentricity_science.jpg .

If you really claimed that Mars' eccentricity is around 0.75, could you please explain why, and how you justify using arbitrary points from which to measure your ellipse major and minor axes in spite of the fundamental definition of an ellipse?

Sincerely,
Shawn

I of course did not take the bait, and replied to "Shawn" with the following:

On Jul 18, 2012, at 10:42 AM, Mike Bara <mikXXXxx@gmail.com> wrote:

I have no idea if his claim is correct, since I've never read his post
nor do I intend to. Nor do I believe you aren't him. Nor did I use
anything "arbitrary" in my book. If you want to know whether my claim
about Mars' orbit being the 2nd most eccentric in the solar system is
correct, I suggest you look it up on Google.

On the off chance you aren't really [XXXXX] or some other plant, I'd
suggest you take anything they may say about my "claims" with a grain
of salt the size of Pluto. They even seem to be claiming I predicted
the end of the world in 2012, or something along those lines, which of
course I did not. However, everything I did predict in The Choice has
come true so far, and in pretty much exactly the timing I said it
would.

Have a nice day. I'm sorry I don't have more time to address false
claims from morons, but I have another book to finish. By all means
look for me on Ancient Aliens this week tho!

 "Shawn" then replied to me with the following:

Nho Buddy <nhobuddy@gmail.com>	7/18/12
to me

I do not know who [XXXXX] is, nor am I the owner of that blog.  I use a pseudonym email account because I work in a law office and cannot risk having my name "out there" affiliated with non-business work.  Could you possibly explain to me how you define eccentricity of an ellipse, and how you measure major and minor axes?  You don't have to read that post to tell me that.

- Stuart

 

Now, at the time, I had no idea who Stuart Robbins was, but it's now completely obvious what happened. He had a signature with his real name in this email address, which he changed to "Shawn" in the initial email so I wouldn't know who he was. Of course, even if he had used his real name, I wouldn't have known who he was, nor would I have cared. But when he hit "reply," he forgot to redact his real name and insert "Shawn."

 

What a dunce. For future reference, Stuwie, when lurking creepily on the internet it's a good idea to think before you send off an email that proves you're both stupid and creepy.

Before I could even respond, he sent me the following panicky email trying to cover his tracks:

Nho Buddy <nhobuddy@gmail.com>	7/18/12
to me

 

P.S.  I actually have a few different pseudonyms I commonly use.  Thought I'd go with "Stuart" on that one as a little joke, don't take it to mean anything else.  I have a weird sense of humor, similar to you if I've read your material correctly.

 

See what a creep he is? First, he lied about who he was, then he lied about working in a law office, and then when he fucked up he compounded his first lie by lying about using pseudonyms. Anybody who takes this smarmy coward seriously at this point is off my Christmas card list. He's creepier than Pee Wee Herman at peep show.

I sent him one last retort:

Or you fucked up and realized you pretended to be "Shawn" on the first
email and put "Stuart" on the second.

Pass this on to {XXXXX} and your other friends; If you always tell the
truth, you never have to remember what you said.

 
To sum this all up, let's look at the facts first and foremost.

Stuart Robbins has made numerous claims about me and my research over the years, pretty much all of which I have proven to be false, misleading or just plain stupid. I have time after time exposed him as the sloppy, venal, jealous, petty, lying creep that he is. I'm sorry if you don't have the talent to get as much attention as I do Stuart, but that's not my problem. If you continue to attack me with your silly, mistake-filled rants I guess I will from time to time respond, but don't count on it. The simple fact is that your behavior shows you are a person with demonstrable emotional problems. I can't do anything about that. I'd suggest therapy.

My final conclusion after reading several of the items that he has posted about me is that Stuart has about as much knowledge of the subjects he attacks me on as he does about kissing girls – i.e. none.

Maybe you should lay off the blog and try and get laid once in a while buddy. If I ever come to Boulder, I'll wingman 'ya...