Putin's real plan

 "The ideology of Putinism is quite eclectic; in it, respect for the Soviet lies side by side with feudal ethics, Lenin sharing a bed with Tsarist Russia and Russian Orthodox Christianity."

 -- Vladimir Sorokin, author of Day of the Oprichnik, just after the beginning of the Russo-Ukraine War.

Things are going badly for poor Vlad Putin. What had been viewed by all as the "second greatest armed force in the world" is now the second-best in Ukraine. 

Moreover, Putin's nightmare -- (he rants about the 1917 Soldier's Rebellion endlessly) -- is that fed-up RF troops might leave their death-trap trenches and turn toward Moscow, leaving his remaining loyal forces to be the 'second best army in Russia.' 

That fear was presaged eerily when Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner Group swiftly took Rostov and sped toward the Kremlin, halted only by fancy negotiations and Putin vowing total forgiveness. Vows that only a special kind of stupidity would believe, as we've seen in Prigozhin's recent demise.

Meanwhile, we now see almost daily events inside Russian territory that reveal both homegrown resistance and savvy Ukrainian special ops, increasingly operating with virtual impunity, adding one more factor to VP's dread of battlefield reversals and plummeting RF troop morale.

Let me be clear. I have great respect for Russian people and culture. My grandfather fought at the Battle of Mukden and carried a spear in the Moscow Opera. We were beautifully hosted (with nifty awards) by the Russian national science fiction convention, some years back. Indeed, my story "The Logs" is a tribute to that folk's legendary endurance in the face of oppression, gulags and all kinds of suffering. One fond hope -  by millions of us on the outside - is that Russia will at last arrive upon an era of sanity, freedom, prosperity and peace...

...after departing Ukraine. And taking all the landmines with them.

         == But one thing has to stop ==

Still, I must tell you that there can be no forgiving the clade of 5000 'ex' commissars, who spent their formative years chanting Leninist catechisms five times daily, while plotting against America and the West from the bowels of the KGB... 

...who then, starting in 1991, simply switched a few symbols - from hammer-sickles to orthodox crosses. They re-labeled the KGB and then resumed exactly the same plotting, the same methods, with the same agents, from the same buildings...

... with just one palpable difference. From 1917 to 1991, their top aim had been to lure-in the U.S. left... and they failed utterly. (The most anti-communist force in American life was always the AFL-CIO; wager me on that!) 

But by flipping a few symbols - erecting statues to the monstrous Nicholas II, for example - and applying copious blackmail, those 'former' commissars, now-mafiosi, proceeded rapidly to take over almost the entire American right.

The same guys, plotting the same plots, with the same agents and methods, from the same buildings... are suddenly the darlings of Fox and Trump and MAGA and the world plutocrat oligarchy. Go figure.

Oh, it didn't happen without help. Horrendously corrupt and treasonous help! See below for several reasons why our own oligarchs have every motive to do whatever Vlad asks.

Yet, it depresses me that there's no concerted effort to reach out to at least some U.S. conservatives with this irony. That the 'ex' commissars they are now fox-talked into loving are the very same guys whom they used to fear and loathe! Now with a little slapped-on paint. Hey, it's even still red!

    == If only our own leaders heeded advice ==

Old Vlad's mind-set might be best understood by reading Vladimir Sorokin's short sci fi dystopia novel Day of the Oprichnik. A warning to us that almost everyone in the West ignores, even after the Ukraine invasion... but that has become the Grand Plan manual for a would-be czar.

Just after Putin launched his supposedly 'three day special military operation,' Sorokin wrote a volcanically erudite denunciation in the Guardian: 

"If you listen to Putin’s speech announcing a “special operation”, America and NATO are mentioned more than Ukraine. Let us also recall his recent “ultimatum” to NATO. As such, his goal isn’t Ukraine, but western civilization, the hatred for which he lapped up in the black milk he drank from the KGB’s teat.

"Who’s to blame? Us. Russians. And we’ll now have to bear this guilt until Putin’s regime collapses. For it surely will collapse and the attack on a free Ukraine is the beginning of the end."

Alas, our own leaders, while they are mostly the Good Guys now, are also dunces at the use of eviscerating polemic. (One reason that I wrote Polemical Judo, an apparently fuitile effort to offer fresh tactics.) There are so many polemics that might penetrate effectively, even through Putin's media-controlling Irony Curtain. 

Alas, originality is not in the playing hand of the goodguys, nowadays.

That lack could wind up ruining us all.

And hence, let me conclude by reiterating a few important points.

       == Understand the devil that you face ==

The younger Putin at least saw himself as part of a movement to end millennia of wretched rule by kings and feudal lords. Lenin and Stalin were not just utterly mistaken, but ruthlessly rationalized so many horrors. Still, at least the younger Putin envisioned himself as part of some kind of utopian project. 

His later version aims only to become the futurist Ivan-the-Terrible portrayed in Sorokin's novel. And, like so many other boringly banal/predictable tyrants, he rationalizes that we, in the Enlightenment Experiment, haven't the guts to stand up for humanity's future. 

Oh, there's a lot more going on in Putin's skull than fear of "color revolutions" for democracy! You can see signs everywhere - in the absurd-kitsch Romanov escutcheons always visible behind him. In his imperial airs and russo-mysticism. And especially in his repeated rants about the 'calamity of 1917,' the last time that fed-up Russian soldiers rebelled and marched on Moscow.  

I mentioned his fetish of erecting statues all over Russia to Czars like Nicholas II, the last bearer of such symbols and an implied godly Right to Rule. The same microcephalic/brutal Nicholas II who, with his idiot Kaiser cousin, plunged a till-then hopeful 20th Century into unprecedented pits of utter hell.

I find it stunning that no one out there deems any of that interesting, let-alone fantastically-telling! That a formerly fervent communist who called the collapse of the USSR "history's greatest tragedy" would then - along with 500 or so fellow "ex" commissars - use czarist imagery and a relabeled-but-unaltered KGB (and Cheney-clan backing) to rebuild the Boyar Pyramid and romanticize the very forces of crazed, blood-aristocratism that his former idols executed, a century ago. 

And all that without anyone even murmuring the word "hypocrite!"

The fact that no one in the west calls this out... not even trying to use any of it to slap-awake those few MAGAs who retain some residual neural activity... is an astonishing case of historical blindness by our side's punditry caste. And polemical insipidity.

More space updates… And yeah, the ongoing UFO silliness

I am a co-author of this paper, “Science opportunities with solar sailing smallsats,” announcing “Project Sundiver”… offering a wide suite of potential fast interplanetary missions that could accelerate far faster than today’s rockets can manage, by swooping DOWN to pass very close to the Sun, spreading lightsail wings to catch a boost off the blasting brightness there. The team did proof of concept with a grant at NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC).  

But sure, I have another reason to root for “Project Sundiver” ... my first novel, Sundiver!

As for the ongoing UFO silliness… this Forbes journalist back in January did something rare - he asked excellent questions, understood everything I said, and described (condensed) it accurately, in a wide range of topics. “Why Are UFOs Still Blurry? A Conversation With David Brin.”

"Believe" what you like. Just don't claim to be modernist or scientific in this cult that keeps repeating - twice per decade for the last 80 years - the exact same incantations and spells, never producing an iota of actual evidence. Oh, I have studied concepts of the 'alien' all my life! A bazillion concepts that are vastly less tedious and bo-ring.

== Solar System News! ==

The wonderful Japanese probe that brought samples from the asteroid Ryugu has offered glimpses of interstellar dust that likely predates the Solar System. Embedded in the sample rocks are grains of stardust.

Unfortunately, Russia's Luna-25 moon lander suffered an 'emergency situation in lunar orbit, prior to a scheduled touchdown attempt.

A new study featuring data from the NASA Mars Perseverance rover reports on an instrumental detection potentially consistent with organic molecules on the Martian surface.

An observatory made of hundreds of tanks of water observes Cherenkov Radiation when particles pass through them that were created when super-hyper energetic gamma rays hit atoms in the atmosphere. Those super-hypers (up to about 10 Tev each!) are apparently much more common from the Sun than we thought.

NASA and DARPA announced they awarded Lockheed Martin and BWX Technologies to build and develop a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) engine. An NTR achieves high thrust similar to in-space chemical propulsion but is two to three times more efficient. We helped develop some precursor techs at NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program – (NIAC) – but at half a $billion, this looks to be getting ready for prime time. NASA and DARPA are looking at a launch target of late 2025 or early 2026.

Combining art & science: Ron Miller’s two newest oeuvres. Natural Satellites: The Book of Moons. The natural satellites of the planets―the solar system's moons―are some of the most extraordinary places imaginable. Recently, scientists have turned to the moons for answers in their investigations of the origins of the solar system and the evolution of life on our own planet.  

And The Big Backyard: The Solar System Beyond Pluto. Our solar system extends almost halfway to the nearest star. It is composed of not only planets, asteroids, and comets, but powerful forces and vast fields of energy. Beyond the orbit of Neptune are countless icy comets, and signs of undiscovered planets.

== Farther Out ==

Some really weird objects near the Milky Way’s central black hole.

What a privilege to live to see the twin LIGO observatories, co-founded by my friend Kip Thorne, discover and analyze gravitational waves from converging neutron stars and black holes at ‘short wavelengths of a few hundreds or thousands of kilometers. But what of the deeper growl of longer waves? MUCH longer on galactic scale? Researchers looked at data from about 70 pulsars and found is a pattern of deviations from the expected pulsar beam arrival timings that suggests gravitational waves are ‘jiggling space-time as though it's a vast serving of Jell-O’ … ‘possibilities range from cosmic strings to dark matter to primordial black holes that formed soon after the Big Bang.’

A mirror-like planet with an albedo of 0.80 reflects so much light from its very nearby star that astronomers offer a theory that the planet started out as a gas giant but has been losing mass over time. It must have an atmosphere composed of silica material, like glass, along with titanium. Effectively, then, the atmosphere has a mirror-like composition,  super-saturated with silicate and metal vapors. This means that, quite literally, it rains titanium on this weird world.  

One side of this white dwarf is (apparently) composed (on the surface at least) of hydrogen, while the other seems made up of helium. Weird! Though the mind spins with notions of sloshing tidal waves of hydrogen, since “Janus” is rotating on its axis every 15 minutes. Especially since some white dwarfs transition from being hydrogen- to helium-dominated on their surface. Or else the answer, according to this science team, may lie in magnetic fields.

== Even farther out ==

A team used gravitational lensing to discover an ultra-massive black hole, an object over 30 billion times the mass of our Sun, in the foreground galaxy – a scale rarely seen by astronomers.

Farther out… WAY farther… the Webb is helping several approaches to refining the famed Hubble Constant for how rapidly the universe is expanding. A good summary here. 

Interesting article in Universe Today that identifies the distant stars that were in the line-of-sight of high-power, very directional planetary-radar transmissions, estimates when the signal should arrive at each star, and when we might expect a reply if anyone on the other end detects the NASA signal and is able to answer promptly.

Fortunately 99.999% of Earth’s radio emissions – including “I Love Lucy” – fade away long before one light year. The "METI" cult, who are fetishistically and rudely and illegally trying to foist "yoohoo!" so-called messages, aim to send far more lasting, laser-like coherent beams. And my opposition is explained here. 

So why don't I mind these deep space radar blips which are also coherent? Because the odds of bad outcomes are hugely lower compared to the beneficial science. And - simply - because unlike arrogant METI, this is not a jerky rude and illegal thing to do.

And as long as we're on rude jerks.... Kooky Dmitry Rogozin strikes again - denying that NASA landed on the moon! This is the same fella who turned down Elon Musk and this unintentionally caused Musk to create SpaceX, the greatest launch success since Sputnik. Of course this is part of the putinist doubling down on riling-up the one force on Earth that might save them... the US lobotomized right.

The Struggle Against Vile Authority Continues... but which authority? Want the perfect place to express discontent?

First -  for those of you tl;dr folks who only have patience for just a few paragraphs -- a mini-rant you'll like:

== Torches & Pitchforks? Or.... ==

Sales of private jets are likely to reach their highest ever level this year, placing an increasing burden on the planet. While many of the owners escape aviation taxes, there are few curbs on the greenhouse gases.  

With wealth disparities at French Revolution levels and the Oligarchy Party shrieking for more always-wrong Supply Side tax cuts and desperate to slash the IRS... one aspect of this growing class war proves that our would-be lords are mostly dunces! That aspect is their gluttonous belief that folks will never wake up. Never radicalize. 

Me? I don't want things to get to French Revolution levels! Or the kind of fury that was incited by the idiotic/evil Romanov czars.  A moderate reformism, that is fiercely determined but calm, accomplishes far more! Moreover, there is a gentle radicalism that could awaken many (not all) of the dismally moronic inheritance brats to their own, ultimate self-interest. To ignore their addiction to flattering sycophants and instead help restore the Rooseveltean social contract that gave us all - including the rich - a better world.  

That radical act would be for millions to march on all private jet terminals, on the same day, with signs and chants - NOT torches and pitchforks – prodding the elites with Mildly and Legally revolutionary cries: 

“BACK into commercial First Class where you belong! Sit there in your leather seat that's only twice as comfortable as ours, sip your mimosa, enduring our delays and our frustrations, so you'll help fix them! 

"Chat with us, when we upgrade and thereby broaden your horizons. 

"Fly with us! Or else learn from Thomas Paine and Adam Smith and their peers how even a moderate, reasonable people can rediscover vigor.”

In fact… care to get this started? Offer a date that YOU think would be good one, for us all to march on the private jet terminals! The anniversary of commercial air travel? 9/11? Some Republican primary debate? The Dec 17th anniversary of Wright Brothers first flight? Will YOU help promote it?

And now to all the tl;dr stuff...

== Were we all 'programmed' by Hollywood? ==

I’m always ready to credit another contrarian who shines light on too-unquestioned assumptions. Take Jonathan Kirshner, a professor of international political economy at Cornell University and the author of "Hollywood's Last Golden Age: Politics, Society, and the Seventies Film in America." 

I don’t quite agree with JK, that cinema became so much less critical since the 1970s. (The issues - and the world - grew more complex, but there's still plenty of griping going on.) Still, Kirshner does zoom in-upon something important:

 “…that government will likely always be a reliable antagonist because the story line of lone, underdog individuals triumphing over the odds is uniquely American.”  

That’s consonant with my #1 assertion in Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood, about why our films nearly always contain themes of individualism diversity, eccentricity and - especially - Suspicion of Authority (SoA). 

It's hard even to conceived how such a relentless propaganda campaign - (you got your SoA reflex from those movies, myths and songs!) - would be propelled deliberately by some cabal. An anti-authority campaign dictated by a cabal... of authority figures? 

Kirshner believes - as do I - that audiences themselves are the ones driving these narratives, not the studios or filmmakers, who chase after products that audiences will buy. He elaborates:

 ..."The government is very powerful, and so opposition to power is always a good trope. We also have things that are walled behind us in secrecy and so we are allowed to let our imaginations run wild."

Of course it’s more general than that. Suspicion Of Authority (SoA) is not always directed at Big Government. Conniving corporate kingpins will also do! And crime lords. And foreign despots and SPECTRE-style secret societies. And alien invaders, sure. Heck SoA is by now the most pervasive way to get an audience to bond with a protagonist – even in a romantic comedy! Especially if you include oppressive ‘authority figures’ like a status-conscious dad or gossipy mother-in-law.

SoA is one of the core memes conveyed in nearly all Hollywood flicks you ever loved, along with tolerance, diversity and personal eccentricity. Which helps explain why many monolithic regimes deeply fear Hollywood media and censor it, when possible.

And yes, all that propaganda that YOU suckled all your life helped to make YOU the fiery independent Authority-resisting gal or guy you are, today. 

And yes, see a whole lot of examples in Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood.

== The struggle continues ==

Oy, does even a week go by without some Trumpian factotum turning on him? 

Dig it, Trump's been 'betrayed' by more folks he earlier called 'great guys!' than all other U.S. presidents combined.

Wherever you stand in today's U.S. culture war - even if you love Trump - one thing is utterly inarguable. He is by-far the worst judge of character ... or at inspiring loyalty... that anyone ever saw.

Of course this jpeg only scratches the surface. The "Former 'great guys' who betrayed me!" thing has no answer!

In contrast, when you point out the other fact from that jpeg... that almost a hundred times as many high GOPpers as Dems have been indicted for crimes including child molestation, bribery etc, by grand juries all across America (especially in red-run states)... the reflex response is that thousands of randomly recruited jurors (mostly white retirees) are part of a massive conspiracy, in collusion with GOP-appointed prosecutors and judges, that has stolen elections...

...and 'weaponized' the quarter million heroes of the FBI/Intel agencies and military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on Terror... all without leaving a single tangible trace.

Riiii-i-i-ight. 

Absurd? Sure, But that incantation works for them, perfectly. 

So... stick with the "Former 'great guys' who betrayed me!" thing. It has no packaged response and truly terrifies em.

== Facts beat blowhard yammers? ==

Ten minutes worth watching. Brian Cohen compellingly highlights Biden’s truly impressive accomplishments, followed by someone’s interview with Biden addressing the age issue. Alas, the recent ABC poll shows that a significant number of Americans may prefer America’s least successful and most criminal past president over one of America’s most objectively successful ones.  

Far worse are those on America's (blue/sane) side of this phase of civil war, seeking any excuse to flake out and betray the only coalition that can save America, the planet and our kids.  By jibbering off to the next version of standard, Nader-Stein-Kremlin treason.

Dig it. Biden may not be the Grant or Lincoln we want. But he has more than earned vigorous support. And yeah, if he fades a bit into taking more naps, I am willing to rely (as he does) on the 5000+ vastly skilled and qualified grownups he appointed to positions Trump had filled with jibbering horrors and potemkin stooges and 'great guys." 

Those hugely competent adults are why we differ from 6000 years of nations focused on kings or dictators or 'strong men.' 

Those grownups are why I sleep well, even knowing old JoBee may take naps. 

== The Court ==

Yes to everything being said about the Roberts Court, which is proving to be by far the most corrupt and politically biased in 140 years, now distrusted by over 75% of Americans. But none of the essays and rants about this zero in on the Supreme Court majority's priority #1... the "Roberts Doctrine" that individual state legislatures have utter sovereignty to control their own elections, thus empowering cheats and travesties - like utter gerrymandering - so that the party in power can ensure they will remain in power, no matter what the people want. Which means...

...that democracy is meaningless, which is, after all, the stated position of the oligarchs who control AEI, Cato and other institutions of feudalism. Like the Republican Party.

Even were this not blatant betrayal and theft, the whole notion of state 'sovereignty' - especially to restrict voting rights - was settled in... um... 1865?

Alas, the Union side of this phase of civil war is stunningly incapable at laying things out clearly and cornering this cabal of blatantly suborned or blackmailed shills. e.g. there are ways to cancel out the writing rationalizations offered by John Roberts. Tactics that I have seen no Democratic politician or pundit even hint at. See a couple re gerrymandering at The "Minimal Overlap" Solution to Gerrymandering.

…and Gerrymandering American Democracy: More Fragile than we think.

== Final Miscellany  ==

A fascinating example of the new computer art stunningly taking off… A Midjourney AI video visualization for Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire". Incredibly vivid… and the thing I resent is not Midjourney but Billy Joel, for not taking responsibility for maintenance of a song that’s a public cultural item, even if he still owns copyright!  He should have issued updated versions every decade since… with a foundation to keep rolling (burning?) after he is gone.

Across the lifespan, and across every demographic group, Americans die at younger ages than their counterparts in other wealthy nations. An inflection made this worse when many Americans refused vaccines that lowered death rates in many other countries.  And yes, the 2^nd derivative of this curve seems to associate very strongly with the Trump Administration.

Space updates - mostly great science... and a bit of UFOs

Is this worth pondering as another worry on our plate? A year or so ago astronomers were saying “Don’t worry (much) about Betelgeuse going supernova any time soon," despite the earlier nerves set off by the Great Dimming Episode. Now? A new paper says “Never mind that nevermind!”

This is from the conclusion: “We conclude that Betelgeuse should currently be in a late phase (or near the end) of the core carbon burning. After carbon is exhausted in the core, a core-collapse leading to a supernova explosion is expected in a few tens years.”  

Yipe, do bear in mind there are many sage astronomers who disagree. Anyway, we’re told that 150 pc seems a reasonably safe distance. It’d need to be within 50pc (160 light years) to have appreciable effects, except maybe to astronauts. Uh, one hopes. Still here’s an interesting question!  Ron Paludan on my FB feed asked “Do we know of any other stars with probable exoplanets that would be closer to Betelgeuse?”

Good one! I’d give it high priority! In fact I am making this an open call for anyone out there to check which known exoplanets might be closest to Betelgeuse! It should be easy to start by eliminating any that aren’t in the upper half of Orion!

If we do find a life world in the danger zone, then it suddenly becomes among our top reasons to forge ahead to interstellar flight! What better job for our g-g-grandkids than as protectors!

== Closer to home ==

A new 'quasi-moon' discovered near Earth has been traveling in tandem with our planet since 100 BCE.  

Congratulations ESA/Europe for launching the JUICE mission to study Jupiter's moons and maybe confirm oceans under the ice!

Do the moons of Uranus hold water? A re-analysis of 1980s Voyager data has led NASA scientists to conclude that four of Uranus’ largest moons—Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon—probably contain water oceans below their icy crusts. These oceans are likely dozens of kilometers deep and probably fairly salty in being sandwiched between the upper ice and inner rock core, heated by radioactive decay.  This raises to double digits the number of likely ‘ice-roofed oceans’ in the Solar system. Implying that such worlds might be the principal sites of liquid water all across the universe...

...rendering talk of ‘goldilocks zones’ to specialized speculations of only Earth-style ‘open oceans’ exposed to the sky. That’s still an important distinction… it seems unlikely we’ll find tech-using peers under any of those ice roofs. But simpler life is another matter. It is likely everywhere.

Data from the Cassini spacecraft points to the presence of phosphates on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. A key ingredient for life.

The NASA/JPL mission to the metal asteroid Psyche appears to be back on! Set for launch in October of 2023.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has spotted short bursts that make up lightning bolts on Jupiter, showing that Jovian lightning works in much the same way as it does on Earth. 

A Webb telescope image of Uranus shows the planet’s rings in detail and its unique inclination. Unlike Earth, which spins on an axis of 23.4 degrees, Uranus rotates at an angle of almost 90 degrees, NASA says. This extreme tilt makes Uranus the only planet to rotate almost completely on its side. Images also of storm clouds and a polar ice cap!

This particular cave “…is located near the moon’s South Pole, an area rich in water ice and other valuable resources that could be used for life support, fuel, and construction materials.” Um, what ‘other’ resources? The only ‘lunar resources’ with any near term validity are those potential ice fields. But sure. we’ve funded robotic cave explorer designs at NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC). See other potentially useful pit caves. 

“During its relatively short time monitoring the interior of Mars, NASA’s  InSight seismographic lander detected hundreds of marsquakes, giving us detailed information about the Martian interior. From this, scientists were able to compile the first detailed map of the guts of Mars, and learn more about the state of Mars' interior activity. In 2021, InSight logged two tremendous events on the opposite side of the planet: a giant marsquake bigger than anything the lander had detected, and a meteorite impact that rattled Mars.” Result: Mars's center is a liquid iron alloy, with surprisingly large amounts of sulfur and oxygen mixed in.

Fascinating and gorgeous new images of details of the Sun’s surface, especially around sunspots.

A space probe operated by the United Arab Emirates has taken the most detailed photos yet of the Martian moon Deimos. Flying within 62 miles of the little moon, the probe, called Hope, got the closest to Deimos of any spacecraft since NASA’s Viking 2 mission in 1977.”  Alas, ultraviolet and infrared readings indicate Deimos is more similar in composition to Mars’ surface than to a carbon-rich space rock. Too bad. Had they been carbonaceous with volatiles beneath the surface, they might have become important ISRU filling stations for Mars missions.

== Oy… why is it always aliens? ==

Among the many cult misconceptions spread by Hollywood is that - of course - ‘aliens have already picked up our radio and TV.” 

In fact, Jim Benford and others showed that even when Earth was at its ‘noisiest’ in the 1980s, our tech emissions faded into background unless you aimed a dish at us the size of Connecticut. Now a research team has updated this result for today’s proliferation ofd cell phone radio. Folks at Mauritius U in Africa, and Manchester U, and SETI in California “…conclude that any nearby civilization located within 10 light years of Earth and equipped with a receiving system comparable to ours would not detect the Earth’s mobile tower leakage.”  The article cites me in several places. 

As for the damned UFO mania? Well, this time I'll limit my response. Though Again and again I repeat:

I've studied 'the alien' for 60 years from astrophysics to SETI to sci fi. I've got an 'open mind' to notions of other being!  Alas, I do NOT see any evidence for (nor want) contact with silvery teaser jerks violating every physical law while acting exactly (exactly!) like nasty forest elves feared by our ancestors. Today a MILLION times as many active cameras as the 50s catch ever-fuzzier 'images', mostly explicable easily - though for those 'tictacs' -- those that haven't already been easily explained by Mick West -- see my 'cat-laser' theory that does not require loony-sadistic superduper silverguys breaking every physical law. 

(And my theory - in my posting: What's Really up with UAPs/UFOs? - offers a very, very easy and straightforward experimental test.)

Worst of all about this cult mania that erupts like bad acne, about twice per decade, is the insult to the tens of thousands of TOP people who by now would have studied any crashed ships, across eighty years. 

The cult yammerers never tabulate that. Tens... of... thousands of our best people!  (I know a lot of our 'best people' who feel snubbed, 'cause THEY were never invited to study no UFOs!)

Learn to recognize when you are in a cult.

-------------

Oh... finally... someone tell Zach Weinersmith that there’s more to his story about Svetlana Savitskaya than he might have worked out with the beautiful brunette here.