paranormal

At there’s a few US shows that I quite like:  Ghost Hunters International, UFO Hunters, and Hell’s Kitchen.  In Ghost Hunters International a team of everypeople go around the world investigating supposedly haunted places with lots of dubious equipment – like a camera with its IR filter taken out – which they keep referring to as ‘full spectrum’ (it’s not), and, of course, the requisites of any latter day ghost hunt – handicams, closed circuit rigs, digital voice recorders, that sort of thing.

In UFO Hunters three presenters (Bill Burnes – Alien UFO Believer – wears dark glasses indoors, Pat Uskert – UFO believer, Ted Acworth – scientist/sceptic/MythBusters effect beneficiary)  investigate UFO sightings, past and present. Speaking to witnesses, official documents, looking at out of focus videos shot by idiots, and checking for evidence. In Hell’s Kitchen a load of people line up to be sodomised (metaphorically) by Gordon Ramsay in the hopes of winning a job in a restaurant.  And they cook a bit too.

What’s interesting about all three isn’t the content or the subject.  The content and subject of the programmes are delivery mechanisms for the production.  With Ghost Hunters International, and UFO Hunters, the investigations results are usually ambiguous,  a bitch if you want exciting an engaging.  So, almost inevitably, they have exquisitely crafted soundtracks, and suspenseful narration.  Hell’s Kitchen no doubt has its share of in real life drama, but what’s clever is the way that the narrative is formed.

If they didn’t story board it I’d be amazed.   Not because drama didn’t happen, in that sense it’s real, but because they’ve got to convey things concisely as part of an overall narrative.

All three shows have  gone one-step further than old school reality television because the soundtrack is crafted to each situation, which influences the general mood of the content to the point that the content is no longer king.  It’s like selecting paragraphs from a book,  and controlling their new context with an additional narrative driven by the music.  The jarring sound effects on Ghost Hunters International are great, as are the riffs on Hell’s Kitchen.

There’s plenty of other reality shows that are driven by the production, particularly American reality shows, but, Ghost Hunters International and UFO Hunters pretend they’re not  – everything is made to look authentic in an existential sense  – and Hell’s Kitchen is the opposite – it’s very hard to see it as anything other than production driven entertainment, it is so in your face, right down to substantial and dramatic recaps at the start of the show.

All three shows are bollocks.   But that’s not the point.

When newspapers, and many others, use the phrase scientist or scientists, it is usually to assert that something has some kind of innate authority.  It’s silly.   We are all guilty of turning off our brain sometimes when an expert says something, because they’re an expert; we are conditioned somewhat to listen to experts, because, within the scope of their expertise, they’re probably right.  But it’s not clever to accept anything without examination.  It’s not the fault of experts per-se.  It’s a universally accepted truth that some people are arseholes or a bit bonkers.  Even experts. Most people aren’t.

On to Dr Edgar Mitchell – scientist: I don’t think Edgar Mitchell is an arsehole.  I also think what he has to say is somewhat newsworthy because of who he is.

I don’t think he’s a liar (people who believe stuff aren’t).  I don’t think he’s harmful.  Unlike the overwhelming majority of people he has been to the moon.   In a recent Kerrang Radio interview he unequivocally stated that extraterrestrial life exists.  But, from what I’ve read, unless life is very rare, there is likely to be life on planets capable of supporting it.  I’m not closed minded about it.  Belief in extraterrestrial life is not that controversial, it may turn out to be wrong, and I’d accept that.  I think he’s wrong to be so definite about it.

Unfortunately he then goes on to say that extraterrestrials have visited earth.  I think this is highly unlikely because of the stellar distances involved.  Space is very big.  The nearest star to the sun, Proxima Centuri, is 4.2 light years away; at light speed that’s 4.2 years travel.  39.69 trillion km away.  39,690,000,000,000 km.  Fast-as and faster than light travel are probably impossible.  It’d be great if it were possible, imagine a computer that received messages before it sent them.   Life could be much farther away than 4.2 light years.  There may not be life near Proxima Centuri.  Technologically advanced life may be significantly rarer than life.

For such reasons it is highly unlikely any extraterrestrial would visit earth without spaceships that could travel at speeds that make long distance travel practical well within their life-span.  I don’t think that’s a controversial opinion.

Edgar Mitchell elaborates, according to him, not only have aliens visited earth, but they’ve also been in contact with governments.   If aliens were visiting earth, contacting governments superficially makes sense.  They administer a lot of things, and they’re supposed to be representative.  But I question why any advanced beings would want to get involved.   There are several problems.  Firstly, any exchanges of technology or knowledge would give whichever geographic grouping of primitives a huge advantage over the other primitives.  So it would have to be done selectively or globally.  Even selectively as soon as the others found out there’s potential for trouble.

Secondly, assuming that extraterrestrial visitors have paid attention to the last couple of centuries, in which millions of people have died in various conflicts, I would think the transfer of technology to us as a species could be a bit of a risk.  Unless the aliens retained a bigger stick.  We have not behaved rationally towards each other.

But…

What really annoys me about Edgar Mitchell, and disclosure UFO people in general, is that it rests on foundations that are made of anecdotes.  It’s always something that has been heard ‘in intelligence circles’ or something on the grapevine.  Some expert clique.  If they want to be taken seriously by sane people they need Who, Where, When, and Why  – but they conveniently hide behind the same secrecy they claim to be against.

“Who told you?”

“Can’t say – it’s secret”