Case Tape 347 UFO Crash: The loss of critical thought, analysis and investigation in America.

Submitted by admin on September 1, 2010 - 12:25am
  • Crazy UFO Events

Boy I got side-tracked tonight. I was listening to the No-Agenda show and Adam Curry got off on one of his "UFO Rants".

Just to set the tone here, I believe most of the stuff Adam comes up with is absolutely Crack-Pot but Dvorak is much more my type of critic. Anyway, Curry mentions something about a UFO crash in Santa Fe and so I was in front of the computer and curiously looked it up. In my experience, there is never any real evidence. There's usually just some really good Sci-Fi writing. I remain a skeptic to this day.

So I wound up on YouTube and found the video below which has generated a great deal of debate. If you've seen it, you know the deal, but I'll try to write this post the way I look at something presented to me as fact and yet I still I get a sense of doubt about it. (if you're in a hurry, just skip to 1:38)

After my first view I kind of paused and said, "Wow, that looked very real." It's at this point that critical thinkers and emotional thinkers part ways. Emotional thinkers will just say, yeah that has got to be real. Just look at it.

A critical thinker goes into investigation mode. Whenever I find something suspect, I use Google for the first wave of research. I looked up the phone number, the park location and any other hints to see if they panned out. Of course nothing matches up. There is no "Tacoma County".  Just typing the number in does not bring up an official sherif site. Looking for "Red Rock Park" brings up areas in Las Vegas and Arizona. What does come up is this site which I immediately deemed a fabrication. Any time I go to a government site, I look for a professional design and a good structure. There should be a menu with "contact", "resources" etc. This is just some jammed up web page with the hikers images. An emotional thinker will be like, "Oh my god there they are!" but the critical thinker cries foul right away.

The next thing I always check out is the domain name. Its www.newbornpix.com which was obvious to me as a scam. I always check domain names to make sure I'm not being phished. You get sites all the time with some random domain like www.paypal38-3eff.com. Any proper sherif or county site would have keywords like "police", "sherif" or "Tacoma". At this point I'm convinced of the hoax, but at the same time I'm holding great respect for the filmmaker as it's quite believable . I also come across this forum and it's here where I become bogged down and intrigued at the mind-set of people. Evidence keeps getting presented and several people in the forum refuse to believe it. There are also many critical thinkers in the forum who think the same way I do. They mention things like:

  • The number 323-906-2753 is a Southern California number. Googling it does not bring up any evidence of the sherif dept (except the fake newbornpix site)
  • Tacoma is in Pierce County
  • Red Rock Park is in either Arizona or Nevada near vegas, depending on which one you mean.
  • Newborn Pictures IS based in LA though (same name as the fake site).
  • Finally it's pointed out that this was in a film festival with the actors Kyle Rankin and Karen Zumsteg. They even give a link.

At this point it should be pretty obvious but the conspiracy nuts all say it's not enough proof. The forum goes on for eight more pages. There's all kind of discussion about CGI techniques, time stamps, EXIF data and the like. Conspiracy theory goes into over-drive as people suggest all the links, including the video maker site are all 'plants' and the only proof is a video confession. The explanation for the wrong number, place and park is chalked up to "government cover-up". You start to witness cognitive dissonance on a major level. Then a person dissects the video with still frames and points out all kinds of lighting irregularities and how strange it is that the camera is so still for a girl who is flipping out.

    

At this juncture there are all kinds of things pointed out.

AMAZINGLY, after all this there are still people who wont believe it until there is a taped "actor confession". I also get caught up reading YouTube comments and some people still buy into it in 2010 even though the hoax appears to be at least 5 years old.

All this gets me to thinking again on the massive importance of critical thinking, investigation and analysis. If you read my blog, you'll know I have a huge problem with Fox News and the way they use propaganda to shift their audiences' perceptions. Several of my own family members are caught up in the Fox News propaganda machine. Glen Beck is a huge hero to them. Yet when I listen to Glen Beck, I get an immediate headache because it's completely nonsensical to me. It occurred to me some time back the the Fox audience has absolutely no capacity for critical thought, that's why listening to the nonsense each night is almost "soothing" to them. Glen Beck commands tens of thousands of people like this . . .people who think he makes sense. Most liberal/moderate people think it's funny and almost entertaining to watch Fox News. They see no issue with the people who whole heartedly believe the hype, but to me it's scary how, in the age of mass communication our nation is loosing the ability to think critically and pull factual information from several sources.

I am seeing a 'trend' where just accepting mass communications as fact is much easier than the research and that is terrifying indeed. Growing trends like this can turn into mobs and then we have a repeat of Germany in the 40's. The internet, 24-hour news TV , and especially Google were all supposed to enrich our information and ability for critical thought, but sometimes I wonder if the technology is outpacing the average person's ability to use it. Older people think, "Wow this is great, all the information is right here on this great show on Fox News." The reality is that with mass information, comes large amounts of mis-information.

True journalism is just about extinct, so each of us has to be our own journalist and investigate claims on our own. We came across another hoax just recently, The Quit-My-Job-by-Dry-Erase-Board Hoax. The story hit social networks like Digg and Reddit and became viral in short time. A day or two later we all found out we'd been had, but since it was all in good fun we didn't mind. Still, you began to think about how FAST and a viral news becomes with our mass communications and realize how critical it is for us to pause and analyze the story.

I still listen to No Agenda all the time but when Adam launches into Chem Trails, Fema Camps and UFOs, I begin to nod off. Thankfully Dovorak is on the podcast to keep it grounded in sanity. Every now and then I'll research the claims on the web and find that it's mostly crack-pot nonsense. I seem to be able to enjoy No Agenda conspiracy theories for the sheer entertainment value. Dvorak and Curry keep each other well balanced. On the other hand, Glen Beck's audience is fully enveloped in his hatred, half-truth and misinformation which gets them closer to being ready to go out and kill somebody. I guess the point here is to follow the old adage, "Count to Ten before making a decision." -and while your at it, research your facts online because journalists are dead and anything you hear could be a complete hoax.

In this age of lies, deceit and mis-information we still have a massive population that takes information at face value; maybe even more than in the old days. Remember, no matter how much somebody tells you they've done the research, do your own. If you have a doubt about something, don't ignore it. Research it. Has mass communication helped us to evolve or will it be our self destruction? Unless our collective brains catch up to the tools we've invented I fear the later.