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From: Don Ledger <dledger@istar.ca> Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 04:18:16 +0100 Fwd Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 08:43:10 -0500 Subject: Re: Mars Face > Date: Thu, 27 Nov 1997 19:43:20 -0600 (CST) > From: Brian Cuthbertson <brianc@fc.net> > To: updates@globalserve.net > Subject: Mars face > >>From the Austin Chronicle, Thursday 27 Nov, 1997, Page A38 > Austin, Texas > +-+-+-+ +-+-+-+ +-+-+ +-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ This newspaper story has to be a textbook case in how to write an article about the "alien field" without actually stepping into the cow pies in that field. One might say its like fighting bullshit with bullshit. I'm going through this story like my grammer teacher use to go through my compositions. MARS PROBE TO CHECK THAT FAMILIAR "FACE" By Faye Flam The Philadelphia Inquirer PHILADELPHIA - With the Mars Global Surveyor in orbit around the red planet, NASA plans to try to update its fuzzy photos of the so-called "Face on Mars", an image made famous by <supermarket tabloids.> * Well now, right off the bat, Faye has catagorized those that give some creedence to the "face" as being at the level of the Tabloid Reader. It's a brilliant use of condemnation by association. Photos sent back from Mars by NASA's 1976 Viking mission showed a milelong hill that looked like an upward-staring face. Some people who saw the images believed they were looking at an ancient structure carved by < space aliens >. *Whoo, this gal is good. Space aliens. Wow, that one ranks right up there with "little green men" doesn't it. It is a sexest world isn't it. Who says they can't be "little green women".? Michael Malin, who is in charge of the cameras on the Mars Global Surveyor, said the public's interest in the original photos had been so great that NASA planned to take new shots of the face as part of its current survey of Mars. The taxpayers are footing the bill, he says, and if they want the face, < NASA should try to give them the face >. * Okay, we cut away to a picture of a very patient Father NASA patting smiling but gullible/ignorant/great unwashed Joe/Jane public on their heads. Much of the interest in the face on Mars has been stirred up by Boston-based engineer Mark Carlotto. Carlotto has developed techniques used by the military to pick out human-made structures from natural ones. He said that when he applied these techniques to the Mars photos, he found that the face and surrounding hills are more likely to have been made by intelligent beings than to be a natural geologic structure that just happens to look like a face near some vaguely pointy hills, as NASA asserts. The builders, Carlotto said, could be indigenous Martians, some unknown race of superintelligent humans, or extraterrestrial builders from a distant world. The Mars face has attracted a small < cult > following that communicates via Internet discussion groups. Carlotto has published a book on the subject, "The Martian Enigmas". The word cult is another buzz word which brings up negative images of those such as the Heavens Gate suicides or any potential unstable and explosive group of people. People not in control. Some < believers > claims there's a full-blown conspiracy in which NASA is purposely shielding the public from the truth. Carlotto suggests that NASA scientists are just too skeptical and stubborn to take these structures seriously. For believers read fanatics. Global Surveyor scientist Malin argues that Carlotto's image- processing technique didn't scan a large enough swath of Mars' landscape to determine whether the so-called face and pyramids were not ordinary, natural structures. If he had looked further, he might have found that every 10th hill looked equally unnatural for his methods, Malin said. Malin said that, by addressing the face issue, he has inadvertently gotten caught in the controversy. He has changed his telephone to an unlisted number because he was getting so many calls from < followers > of Carlotto and others interested in the face on Mars. By using the word followers we can maintain the cultist or relgious fanatic feel, as if Carlotto has gained high priest status, a position I'm sure that Carlotto has no taste for. With Mars Global Surveyor, Carlotto said, there is finally a chance to settle the issue. "It would be a shame if we didn't take advantage of it." He said the Viking photos show hints of teeth and other fine-scale features that, if photographed more closely, might make the face look so obviously alien-sculpted that even NASA skeptics such as Malin will have to concede. It won't be easy for NASA to settle the issue, Malin said. One of the Global Surveyor's cameras, known as the high-resolution camera, will pick out objects just a few meters across. But NASA can't point this camera, which is fixed to the craft. To capture the face, the craft will have to fly directly over it. For that reason, "we can't make any promises", said project leader Arden Albee. < He and his colleagues will need to get lucky to get a picture of the face that's any sharper than the 20-year-old pictures from Viking, Albee said. Albee sending up the old trial balloon. He says it first so he can say I told you so later. Who then could prove otherwise? Malin said the new photos, no matter how good, still might not settle the issue. < The hill might still look like a face. > What an absolutely brilliant line. He saying well of course it "looks" like a face, we agree about that, but that as far as it goes. It will always be a hill that "looks" a face. Between Albee and Faye Flam, the two have done an absolutely fabulous job of putting paid to the Face in Cydonia. I don't know where I stand on this possible alien artifact on Mars but I think it a little too pat to be blowing it off at this juncture. No one knows one way or the other so why is NASA, et al, using questionable language to downplay it and where is Flam coming from. She could just as easily done an interesting piece without doing a soft character asassination on those who think that the face is real. Or is she just playing the hard boiled, you can't pull the wool over my eyes, reporter. I picked on this story because I'm tired of reporters who have their tongues so firmly jammed in their cheeks while they write these story that they haven't got enough skin left over to get a figurative hard on for anything that requires imagination. I've got the Flu and it's making me cranky. Don Ledger END
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