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UFO UpDates Mailing List

From: Steven Kaeser <steve@konsulting.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 05:41:51 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 22:09:05 -0500
Subject: Re:  Kenneth Arnold's testimony

>Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 10:18:55 +0100 (MET)
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>From: Henny van der Pluijm <hvdp@worldonline.nl>
>Subject: Re: UFO UpDate: Re: Kenneth Arnold's testimony

>List,
>
>A fifty year old case. An experienced pilot, Kenneth
>Arnold, saw a train objects that flew extremely fast
>from his private aircraft. They didn't look like aircraft,
>they didn't look like birds. He is so excited that he
>turns toward them to have a better look. After landing,
>he is so excited that he tells reporters about it.
>
>Nobody had after heard of flying saucers or UFOs or
>whatever. Arnold just reports his observation.

Actually, there are many reports of UFOs prior to Arnold's
sighting, but you are correct that the phrase "Flying Saucer" was
not coined by the press until he commented that the objects
looked like saucers skipping on the water.

>Fifty years later someone comes along: 'they were geese'.
>Seems they couldn't have been geese. 'OK, then they were
>American White Pelicans'.
>The arguments against this have been presented over and over
>again. Still, the debate doesn't die out. Worse, some people
>take this extreme silliness seriously.

Of course both sides are making assumptions with the proposals
they are advocating (or suggesting) and since part of the
evidence is somewhat annecdotal there is no way to confirm it one
way or the other. I would tend to trust Arnold's initial
impression, and wouldn't accept the "geese" explanation without
more than a theory.

>The debate goes on for weeks. People who have better
>things to do waste their time on total absurdity.

Since we can't prove what the objects were, the only logical
conclusion that can be drawn is that they are UFOs. At some point
it may be more productive to decide that no conclusion can be
drawn, as opposed to beating this "dead horse" any further.

>On certain days Ufology is just bizarre.

It's been said that "it's always sunny somewhere in the world",
and I would think that it's fair to say that "ufology is always
bizarre somewhere in the world every day".

Steve