OK, I know, but in my defense I saw Jakov Smirnoff live years ago and he was really funny. Honestly.
Anyway, my bud James Oberg has a great article on MSNBC about UFO sightings. He reports on one in detail that took place in Eastern Europe and Russia a few years ago. It sounds like an iron-clad case for an ET ship… until you look at all the evidence.
The direction of the apparition being seen simultaneously near Minsk provided another “look angle.” If the vectors of the eyewitnesses are plotted on a map, they tend to converge out over the Barents Sea, far from land. This made the triggering mechanism for the sightings — assuming they were all of the same phenomenon — even more extraordinary.
I won’t spoil it for you. Go read the article. But remember all this when some UFO proponent talks about airline pilots being rock-solid eyewitnesses. Just because they fly planes doesn’t mean they understand everything they see out the cockpit window.
And when you hear a UFO report, ask yourself what the report is missing. Just about anything can sound like Klaatu is about to land on a Washington DC baseball diamond if one or two key parts are left out.
May 16th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
It’s a streetlight.
Seriously, though, there are so many Flying Objects out there these days, seeing one that’s Unidentified just doesn’t mean so much. Alien visitors are going to have to dodge all our airborne (and spaceborne) crap, not to mention all the stuff we’ll automatically launch at them, if they want to hang out here.
May 16th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I can’t understand why people think, if there were aliens, that they would want to “land on the white house lawn”. Imagine yourself as Klaatu coming up on a new planet occupied by a less technologically advanced civilization. Would you land in the middle of a public place and say, “hey guys, lookie here!” Heck no! I can think of almost no advantages to doing that, and a huge number of disadvantages. You’d want to scope the place out carefully, and if any contact were made at all (probably not), it would be in secret with a government favorably disposed towards you, since there is no central government.
May 16th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
It was not a UFO. It was the light from Venus that reflected off some swamp gas…
Aww heck, even I’m starting to think that explanation will never work.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I’m guessing that many of your younger readers have no idea who Jakov Smirnoff is.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I’m an ex-aviator. You wouldn’t believe how many times I mistakenly thought Venus was a landing light. It is incredibly bright at altitude.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Dude, love the title of this post! I laughed embarrassingly loud in my cubicle. Good show.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
It always amazes me how an alien race can construct starships that can travel faster than the speed of light across an entire galaxy, manage to infiltrate our satellite ring, enter the atmosphere with enough fuel to take off and return to their homeworld, evade our elaborate air defense and air traffic control systems, and yet, still, they can’t manage to remain unseen!
Oh, well, what can I say:
“Klaatu barada nikto,”
Robert
May 16th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
This is slightly irrelevant, but, if memory serves me well (which it might very well NOT), Smirnov might have been my first exposure to stand up comedians as a kid….Particularly his guest spots on “Night Court” (a show which, as I watch it now as an adult, I’m shocked my parents ever let me watch it).
Oh Judge Harry. So funny.
May 16th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Ah, Robin, but you’re a dork. And you’re too young to know Smirnoff.
Steve t, I watched a rerun of Night Court years after it aired, and was shocked to see who the hillbilly dad recurring character was played by.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
My favorite Smirnoff line was an ad lib on the Tonight Show. He was sitting down next to Johnny Carson (damn, I’m old!) and Carson asked what his favorite thing was about America that Soviet Russia didn’t have, and Smirnoff said, “Warning shots”.
Well, *I* liked it.
May 16th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
“Luke: I am your footer.”
HAHAHAHA!
May 16th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Guys I believe that most of the UFO sighting are illusions but I belive in the probability of Aliens. If 500 years back some one would have told about Flying people would have laughed equally hard. Flying is a reality today. It is some thing probably we have not known yet.
May 16th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
FYI, his name is Yakov not Jakov. At least that’s how he spells it. I actually caught his act a couple of years ago in Branson Missouri (wha?) and was pretty hilarious. Some of his stuff was pretty cornpone and some of it was kind of sappy.
I’ll never forget that he hung around after the show and greeted everyone to the last person who cared to stay and say hello to him. He signed autographs and posed for pictures. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy who never lets a day go by without counting his blessings that he had the opportunity to become so successful in this country.
He’s good people.
May 16th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Didn’t read your post :-), but it is either Soviet Union (before 1991) or Russian Federation (after) or just Russia. And, more: Minsk is Belarus, not Russia.
May 17th, 2008 at 12:15 am
UFOs are real. They’re just not from some other world. I worked at (redacted) and saw all sorts of (redacted) that would do things like (redacted). Ahem.
People are smart. We don’t need ET to freak you out.
May 17th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Yeah, I probably had the same sense of shock. That show also featured one of the first prime-time apperances of Terri Hatcher, who plays the over-sexed neice of the diminutive District Attorney (and Dan’s boss)
“How did you get the seat up so high?
sheesh….Why on EARTH did my parents let me watch that show????
I’m gonna go and see if I can find those shows on DVD now.
May 17th, 2008 at 7:28 am
James Oberg takes over from the late great Phillip Klass in actually investigating UFO reports instead of just passing them along. He shows what a rational investigator can accomplish (just like Joe Nickell dealing with “psychic” phenomena). Given the multitude of ill-informed UFO sightings, it is impossible to investigate them all, but concentrating on the most spectacular usually yields a rational explanation. We can only hope Oberg keeps up the good work.
May 17th, 2008 at 7:43 am
This is hugley irrelevant to your post… but… i regularly read your blog and so i know your a huge Dr who dork. Just telling you that David Tennant was on Derren Brown’s trick or treat last night in the UK, you can probarbly catch it on youtube
May 17th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Phil,
Did you ever think you would be old enough that references to our cultural icons would be missed so often. Maybe you should limit your titles to allusions to 21st century pop culture only. That seems to be the bulk of your audience. I, however, love them and get most.
May 17th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I love America! There are dozens of television channels. In Soviet Russia, there are just two. Channel One is nonstop propaganda. Channel Two is a man in a KGB uniform ordering you to turn back to Channel One.
May 17th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
So Oberg found a likely cause that could not be checked with the russians.. But American records should have it too, perhaps he could go that road to obtain more accurate data. I’m being vague, don’t want to give the story away since Phil didn’t do it either. I’m sure anyone who read the story understands what I mean here
May 18th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
@Tim G: so what is a KGB uniform? Grey trenchcoat and hat with dark glasses? Maybe that should read a Red Army uniform.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:27 am
Dunno about Ruski UFOs but the ads on this post want me to “Find Your Russian Beauty Today!…”
I am strangely compelled…
May 21st, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Last!