CHAMELEO ON HYPERSPACE!

Last night I appeared on Solaris Blueraven's Hyperspace radio show, which airs every Friday night at 9 PM PST/12 AM EST on the KCOR Digital Radio Network.  The interview is almost two hours long and can be heard in its entirety HERE.

Intriguing sidenote:  Only a few minutes into the interview, an unknown individual appeared in the alley next to my office and began warbling a weird, ritualistic chant (it sounded like something out of an old voodoo movie like I Walked with a Zombie) directly underneath my open second story window.  If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound from approximately 4:21 to 4:31, until I closed the window.  No doubt this was nothing more than an odd coincidence, of course, but the timing was nonetheless suggestive.

The Truth Is In Here: Flying Saucers Are Real! by Jack Womack

Despite the fact that I own at least forty-four of the hundred-plus weird and rare UFO books on display in Jack Womack’s latest—and perhaps most eccentric—book, Flying Saucers Are Real! (Anthology Editions, 2016), my mind was still blown away by the revelations lurking within its glossy, transcendental pages.  Some of these books are so strange that I’ve never even heard of them much less seen copies, and I’ve been known to haunt antiquarian book fairs all around Southern California for the express purpose of discovering previously overlooked UFOlogical treasures.

Here are just a few of the nightmares waiting to leap from the pages of Flying Saucers Are Real! and wriggle inside your brain cavities with catastrophic intentions:

▪ Hands by Margaret Williams and Lee Gladden (Galaxy Press, 1976) is a “true account” of a Beverly Hills psychiatrist who summons into the material plane a disturbing Boschian entity from another world, a “nameless, headless, eight-handed space alien nicknamed ‘Hands.’”  The cover looks like a detail from a Henry Darger painting, but considerably more disturbing.

▪ In UFO Warning (Saucerian Books, 1963), UFOlogist John Stuart chronicles his formation of the New Zealand Flying Saucer Investigation Society and “tells of meeting beautiful young Barbara Turner—real name Doreen Wilkinson, the only other member of the NZFSIS—and how his wife failed to appreciate their demanding need to investigate the saucers, most evenings.  The narrative takes a very disturbing turn as a ‘loathsome, hideous, evil, disgusting, horrifying’ being appears to them, making sexual advances toward Turner before vanishing; a few nights later, thirteen such beings manifest in her bedroom, and three of them rape her.”  The book includes Gene Duplantier’s black and white illustrations of the aforementioned debaucherous beasts that look like they were drawn by Basil Wolverton while recovering from a particularly debilitating brain fever.  

▪ Night Siege:  The Northern Ohio UFO-Creature Invasion by Dennis Pilichis (self-published, 1982) is “an excellent example of the occasionally delirious crossover between ufology and cryptozoology.”  This 39-page pamphlet not only boasts a wonderfully atmospheric cover depicting ethereal, glowing eyed creatures (that might be made of smoke and/or lumps of hair) crouching behind a copse of trees in a dark forest, but also contains L. Blazey’s charming illustrations, such as the wilderness scene in which a pair of Bigfoot are seen strategically trapping rabbits inside small cages.  Who knew the Bigfoot people were capable of manufacturing cages for such purposes?  Not me—and apparently not the rabbits either.  Those Bigfoots don’t look like vegetarians.  Poor rabbits.

▪ Round Trip to Hell in a Flying Saucer by Cecil Michel (Vantage Press, 1955) is one of those esoteric tomes I’ve often heard about but have never actually seen.  According to Womack, the book pulls the curtain back on the fantastic odyssey of “Bakersfield auto mechanic Cecil Michel” who “tells of being taken to the planet Hell, where he meets Satan.”  If you’re anything like me, you’re instantly going to want one of these for the theological section of your private library.

I could go on and on.  Suffice it to say, Womack is the perfect tour guide through this most dubious art gallery, one which exposes the sociological implications of what might be the most important subculture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the often overlooked realm of UFOs and the limitless inner dimensions of those who choose to investigate them.  The writing style of the book often reminds me of Jorge Luis Borges’ classic Book of Imaginary Beings laced with the sartorial tones of Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary (seasoned, perhaps, with a dash of Rod Serling), a soothing style that puts the more nervous visitors at ease as they find themselves drawn a little too close to the dangerous anomalies on display here. 

As William Gibson writes in his pithy introduction, “The truth, all these years, hasn’t, as The X-Files had it, been out there, but rather was in here,” and with the phrase “in here” Gibson refers not only to the pages of Flying Saucers Are Real!, but also to the often unfathomable and surprising mysteries hidden within the collective unconscious of the human mind itself, which is, undoubtedly, the most dubious art gallery of them all. 

If you want to order a copy of Flying Saucers Are Real!, visit the publisher’s website by clicking HERE. 

"People Can Detect Flashes of Light as Feeble as a Single Photon..."

From David Castelvecchi's 7-19-16 Nature article entitled "People Can Sense Single Photons": 

"People can detect flashes of light as feeble as a single photon, an experiment has demonstrated — a finding that seems to conclude a 70-year quest to test the limits of human vision.

"The study, published in Nature Communications on 19 July, 'finally answers a long-standing question about whether humans can see single photons — they can!' says Paul Kwiat, a quantum optics researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The techniques used in the study also open up ways of testing how quantum properties — such as the ability of photons to be in two places at the same time — affect biology, he adds.

"'The most amazing thing is that it’s not like seeing light. It’s almost a feeling, at the threshold of imagination,' says Alipasha Vaziri, a physicist at the Rockefeller University in New York City, who led the work and tried out the experience himself."

To read the rest of Castelvecchi's article, click HERE.

More About Bush & Hinckley

From Russ Baker's 8-16-16 article entitled "Bush Angle to Reagan Shooting Still Unresolved as Hinckley Walks:  A Story I Had to Leave Out of My Book":

"Why did George H.W. Bush and his cabinet determine that John W. Hinckley Jr. — the man who in 1981 tried to kill the newly inaugurated President Ronald Reagan — was a lone nut, and no conspiracy, foreign or domestic, was involved? How did they arrive at this conclusion just five hours after the shooting, without any thorough examination?

"And why won’t the Federal Bureau of Investigation release its documents on the shooter?

"Hinckley, who was released from a federal psychiatric facility on August 5 after 35 years, remains a mystery, and that’s the way the government prefers it. Among the documents the Bureau withholds are those that reveal organizations linked to him — and the names of his associates.

"One noteworthy individual will not even acknowledge knowing of Hinckley beforehand, someone associated with the shooter’s family, and an even longer history of dissociation — George H.W. Bush.

"Most Americans have never heard about this — and even those who have will be intrigued by some little-known aspects. One is the rather unique way the Bush clan has dealt with or sought to dismiss such peculiar situations — and this is hardly the only one in which the family has been enmeshed.

"Here’s an amazing example: Bush Senior, known to family and friends as “Poppy,” claimed he could not remember where he was when he heard that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. I discovered a good reason why he should have remembered — because he, himself, had been in Dallas that morning.

"I learned this while researching the Bush dynasty for what would become the book Family of Secrets. I came upon one odd 'coincidence' after another, weird ones that would make anyone’s eyebrows soar.

"I also saw an FBI memo showing that the man who would later become Bush 41 had secretly called the FBI shortly after the shooting of President Kennedy with information on a man he said might be involved. It turned out that not only was the man not involved, but that Bush knew him personally — and even, via a subordinate, gave the man an alibi.

"Too weird [...].

"Imagine my fascination, then, to learn that John Hinckley Jr., the man who shot and nearly killed President Ronald Reagan in 1981 — an attempt which, if successful, would have resulted in then-Vice President George H.W. Bush moving up to the top spot — was none other than a friend of the Bush family.

"How strange is that? So strange that it literally caused NBC News’s anchor John Chancellor’s eyebrows to arch as he reported the curious connection.

"The story was broken by the now-defunct Houston Post, and then picked up briefly by the AP and UPI wire services, and some newspapers, plus Newsweek.

"Then it vanished without a trace or further inquiry or comment in the mainstream media.

"The story was so baffling and off-putting that even I, in writing Family of Secrets more than a quarter-century later, did not mention it. I was preparing to publish a book with so many shocking elements that the publisher and I worried about whether the mainstream media would even dare cover it, or review it fairly; in that context, the Hinckley-Bush connection seemed one provocation too far."

To read Baker's entire article, click HERE.

For a related article, check out this 9-17-13 WND.com post entitled "Did George H.W. Bush Witness JFK Assassination?:  FBI Files, Newspaper Ad and Curious Photos Raise Question."

Peter Thiel Wants Your Blood

From Jeff Bercovici's recent article entitled "Peter Thiel Is Very, Very Interested in Young People's Blood":

"More than anything, Peter Thiel, the billionaire technology investor and Donald Trump supporter, wants to find a way to escape death. He's channeled millions of dollars into startups working on anti-aging medicine, spends considerable time and money researching therapies for his personal use, and believes society ought to open its mind to life-extension methods that sound weird or unsavory.

"Speaking of weird and unsavory, if there's one thing that really excites Thiel, it's the prospect of having younger people's blood transfused into his own veins.

"That practice is known as parabiosis, and, according to Thiel, it's a potential biological Fountain of Youth--the closest thing science has discovered to an anti-aging panacea. Research into parabiosis began in the 1950s with crude experiments that involved cutting rats open and stitching their circulatory systems together. After decades languishing on the fringes, it's recently started getting attention from mainstream researchers, with multiple clinical trials underway in humans in the U.S. and even more advanced studies in China and Korea.

"Considering the science-fiction promise of parabiosis, the studies have received notably little fanfare. But Thiel has been watching closely.

"In Monterey, California, about 120 miles from San Francisco, a company called Ambrosia recently commenced one of the trials. Titled 'Young Donor Plasma Transfusion and Age-Related Biomarkers,' it has a simple protocol: Healthy participants aged 35 and older get a transfusion of blood plasma from donors under 25, and researchers monitor their blood over the next two years for molecular indicators of health and aging. The study is patient-funded; participants, who range in age from late 30s through 80s, must pay $8,000 to take part, and live in or travel to Monterey for treatments and follow-up assessments."

To read the rest of Bercovici's article, click HERE.

idiCORE

From David Gauvey Herbert's 8-5-16 Bloomberg article entitled "This Company Has Built a Profile on Every American Adult":

"Forget telephoto lenses and fake mustaches: The most important tools for America’s 35,000 private investigators are database subscription services. For more than a decade, professional snoops have been able to search troves of public and nonpublic records—known addresses, DMV records, photographs of a person’s car—and condense them into comprehensive reports costing as little as $10. Now they can combine that information with the kinds of things marketers know about you, such as which politicians you donate to, what you spend on groceries, and whether it’s weird that you ate in last night, to create a portrait of your life and predict your behavior.

"IDI, a year-old company in the so-called data-fusion business, is the first to centralize and weaponize all that information for its customers. The Boca Raton, Fla., company’s database service, idiCORE, combines public records with purchasing, demographic, and behavioral data. Chief Executive Officer Derek Dubner says the system isn’t waiting for requests from clients—it’s already built a profile on every American adult, including young people who wouldn’t be swept up in conventional databases, which only index transactions. 'We have data on that 21-year-old who’s living at home with mom and dad,' he says.

"Dubner declined to provide a demo of idiCORE or furnish the company’s report on me. But he says these personal profiles include all known addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses; every piece of property ever bought or sold, plus related mortgages; past and present vehicles owned; criminal citations, from speeding tickets on up; voter registration; hunting permits; and names and phone numbers of neighbors. The reports also include photos of cars taken by private companies using automated license plate readers—billions of snapshots tagged with GPS coordinates and time stamps to help PIs surveil people or bust alibis.

"IDI also runs two coupon websites, allamericansavings.com and samplesandsavings.com, that collect purchasing and behavioral data. When I signed up for the latter, I was asked for my e-mail address, birthday, and home address, information that could easily link me with my idiCORE profile. The site also asked if I suffered from arthritis, asthma, diabetes, or depression, ostensibly to help tailor its discounts.

"Users and industry analysts say the addition of purchasing and behavioral data to conventional data fusion outmatches rival systems in terms of capabilities—and creepiness. 'The cloud never forgets, and imperfect pictures of you composed from your data profile are carefully filled in over time,' says Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, a consulting firm. 'We’re like bugs in amber, completely trapped in the web of our own data.'

"When logging in to IDI and similar databases, a PI must select a permissible use for a search under U.S. privacy laws. The Federal Trade Commission oversees the industry, but PI companies are largely expected to police themselves, because a midsize outfit may run thousands of searches a month."

To read the rest of Herbert's article, click HERE.

Northpointe's Secret Algorithms, COMPAS, and the Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence

From Ethan Chiel's 7-27-16 Fusion article entitled "Secret Algorithms That Predict Future Criminals Get a Thumbs Up from Wisconsin Supreme Court":

"There’s software used across the country that predicts whether people are likely to commit a crime. It’s not quite Minority Report, but the same basic idea is behind it: The software assesses various data points about a person and then gives him or her a risk score; the higher the score, the more likely they are to commit a crime in the future. The scores are used by judges in a number of different jurisdictions for sentencing people convicted of crimes.

"Back in May ProPublica published an investigation into the risk-assessment software that found that the algorithms were racially biased. ProPublica looked at the scores given to white people and black people and then whether the predictions were correct (by looking at whether they actually committed or didn’t commit crimes); they found that in Broward County, Florida, which was using software from a company called Northpointe, black people were mislabeled with high scores and that white people were more likely to be mislabeled with low scores.

"This is obviously problematic, as a possible outcome is that judges will give longer sentences to black people based on an erroneous computer assessment of their risk. And that’s something a defendant named Eric Loomis seriously objects to. Northpointe’s software, called COMPAS, was used in his case in Wisconsin. All of these companies say the formulas used to come up with the scores are proprietary so defendants can’t find out why they were deemed low or high risk. Loomis decided to appeal, saying that the use of secret algorithms in the criminal justice system violates his right to due process."

Click HERE to read the rest of Chiel's article, then compare the above excerpts to the following passage from Chapter Two of my first book, Cryptoscatology:  Conspiracy Theory as Art Form (TrineDay, 2012):

"The same year [i.e., 1974] Dr. [Jose] Delgado was telling Congress that 'We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society,' [...] Dr. Louis Jolyon West was proposing just such a plan to the Governor of California, Ronald Reagan.  West hoped to create a Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence at an abandoned missile site in the Santa Monica Mountains.  He stated in print that young black males were unusually violent and required special treatment."  

According to Samuel Chavkin's 1978 book The Mind Stealers, Dr. West's Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence was to be established in order to: 

"...develop 'behavioral indicators, profiles, biological correlates,' to assist 'school administrators, law enforcement personnel and governmental departments' to detect and control 'overt expression of life-threatening behavior by identifiable individuals and groups' [...]. Many critics of Dr. West's proposal were up in arms over the fact that two junior high schools would provide much of the source material for the investigation into the genetic factors which predisposed violence, 'one in a predominantly black ethnic area; the other in a predominantly Chicano area.' One of the most persistent critics of the center proposed by Dr. West was Dr. Isidore Ziferstein, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. 'We have a new situation on our hands,' Dr. Ziferstein said. 'Because of the intensifying economic decline it is inevitable that more and more jobless will go beyond the limits of the law to satisfy their needs. There are probably upwards of 30 percent of our population who are permanently impoverished ... And once these 30 percent become convinced that the democratic process is not working for them, they become desperate and may resort to violent means. There is a rising radicalism in their midst and there is an uppitiness among the blacks and the Chicano prisoners which prison officials find intolerable. To subdue them, the authorities are using new methods. They're employing the psychiatric armamentarium and a new technological tool set -- what has come to be known as psycho-technology. Under the guise of therapeutic behavior modification they're applying anything from Anectine and other aversive drugs to psychosurgery.' For the first time in the history of the United States, criteria were to be set up for the labeling of individuals believed to be potentially criminal, even though they had committed no crime ... those to be drawn upon for experimentation would be children, minority group members, and prisoners. Dr. Ziferstein scorned the idea of 'predicting' which people are potentially violent. 'This means labeling persons as potential criminals, and involves a serious threat to civil liberties.'"

Dr. West may have died in January of 1999, but apparently his perverse dream has morphed and lives on in a different form for a brand new century.  Political researcher Alex Constantine (author of Psychic Dictatorship in the U.S.A., among other valuable books) sheds further lights on Dr. West's Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence in his 4-24-13 Constantine Report post entitled "Fascists in White Coats:  The CIA's Dr. Louis Jolyon West & the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute," which you can read by clicking right HERE.