Monday, June 23, 2008
Here come the UFOs
Yes, I've finished entering the 2007 Canadian UFO cases into our database. It's now in the hands of Geoff Dittman, who I'm sure is crunching data as we speak. No, I'm not going to say what the final number was yet, because we will be sending out a news release once things have been analysed a bit.
I will let a few things out of the bag, though. There were some curious trends this past year. For example, many, many sightings involved orange objects. This in itself may not seem significant, but it is, because this is the first year that this colour was so often cited. Usually, we're looking at white or red being the most often described, but for some reason, this year, it's been orange (and to a slightly lesser extent, yellow).
While out and about this past summer weekend, we visited a used bookstore, and I found two gems in good condition. One was Leonard Cramp's Piece For A Jigsaw III, the third part of his autobiographical account of UFO experiences and his construction of devices through knowledge imparted to him by the aliens. It's a lot of fun with lots of schematic drawings, photos and news clippings documenting his efforts. The other was a copy of David Jacobs' Secret Life, in which he laid out his thesis for malevolent alien abductions. What was most interesting about this copy is that it's heavily annotated by its previous owner, with underlines throughout many passages. Best of all, the noted passages, complete with dog-eared pages, are probably the least relevant of Jacobs' comments, such as brief summaries of notorious abduction cases that Jacobs had nothing to do with. Details of the abductions he investigated and studied weren't annotated at all.
Other things to note: Chris Reid will be hosting the premiere of Mysterious Manitoba, the new talk show on CJUM FM (101.5) on Wednesday, June 25, 2008, at 8:30 pm. He has invited me to sit in with him as a "regular," as we'll be talking everything from UFOs to ghosts to monsters and other Forteana. This will be my formal return to CJUM, since I had a UFO talk show on the station (called UFORUM) back in 1976! I co-hosted with Roger Matas, once with CJOB and now PR guy for the City of Calgary.
Finally, with this year's Canadian UFO Survey, I have finally run out of physical storage space. Where do I put this year's foot-high pile of Canadian UFO reports, since my filing cabinets are full?
I will let a few things out of the bag, though. There were some curious trends this past year. For example, many, many sightings involved orange objects. This in itself may not seem significant, but it is, because this is the first year that this colour was so often cited. Usually, we're looking at white or red being the most often described, but for some reason, this year, it's been orange (and to a slightly lesser extent, yellow).
While out and about this past summer weekend, we visited a used bookstore, and I found two gems in good condition. One was Leonard Cramp's Piece For A Jigsaw III, the third part of his autobiographical account of UFO experiences and his construction of devices through knowledge imparted to him by the aliens. It's a lot of fun with lots of schematic drawings, photos and news clippings documenting his efforts. The other was a copy of David Jacobs' Secret Life, in which he laid out his thesis for malevolent alien abductions. What was most interesting about this copy is that it's heavily annotated by its previous owner, with underlines throughout many passages. Best of all, the noted passages, complete with dog-eared pages, are probably the least relevant of Jacobs' comments, such as brief summaries of notorious abduction cases that Jacobs had nothing to do with. Details of the abductions he investigated and studied weren't annotated at all.
Other things to note: Chris Reid will be hosting the premiere of Mysterious Manitoba, the new talk show on CJUM FM (101.5) on Wednesday, June 25, 2008, at 8:30 pm. He has invited me to sit in with him as a "regular," as we'll be talking everything from UFOs to ghosts to monsters and other Forteana. This will be my formal return to CJUM, since I had a UFO talk show on the station (called UFORUM) back in 1976! I co-hosted with Roger Matas, once with CJOB and now PR guy for the City of Calgary.
Finally, with this year's Canadian UFO Survey, I have finally run out of physical storage space. Where do I put this year's foot-high pile of Canadian UFO reports, since my filing cabinets are full?
# posted by rutkows @ 7:50 AM 
