the "ET ticket"

i do a lot of reading about the 2008 presidential race, i think mainly because i like to watch how campaigns evolve and how candidates shape and reshape themselves in response to one another and to polls. it's a fascinating hall of mirrors; who's reading and predicting popular opinion most effectively? who's got their finger most firmly planted on the "American" pulse, and how do they attempt to give themselves that air of inevitability in terms of being the candidate that everyone else sees as the most electable?

in light of this, i thought some of you might be interested to see how the UFO question has been used--by candidates and voters alike--as a defining platform issue from time to time. jimmy carter was seen as the UFO disclosure candidate by many in the UFO community; george bush sr., with his extensive CIA background, seemed as good a bet as any to disclose "the truth" about UFOs while in office. on the campaign trail, bush jr. even once said (probably without seriousness) that cheney would take care of UFO disclosure as soon as they got to office. of course, these hopes were not realized, and you can imagine the response of the general public to a Hillary or a Barack or a Ron Paul announcing that UFO disclosure will henceforth be a significant element of their campaign for the office of president.

here is a series of articles concerning the relationship of various U.S. presidents to UFOs and disclosure (beware: some are based entirely on historical record, others are HIGHLY speculative). and here is an interesting collection of responses from representatives, senators, and the white house to letters written by citizens requesting congressional investigations of the government's UFO-related activities. happy reading!

**i've finished a preliminary outline for my paper and am currently tearing it apart in an effort to focus & reorganize my arguments. i'll post it as soon as i can figure out the best way to make it fit the space of this column. suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

timeline

i now have a good idea of when each of my papers will be due this semester. my timeline for completing my thesis thus aims to take advantage of the downtime between these other papers.

sept. 27--meeting w/ Harriette. will have an outline of my paper with all relevant sections identified and logically organized.
first week in october--compile master list of all sources found to date, begin writing individual sections of paper by plugging sources into relevant areas
second week in october--communicate w/ faculty & professional organizations, gather statements of disciplinary perspective (most time spent writing philosophy paper due oct. 17)
third week in october--give progress report to class, identify sections of paper where more research/support is needed (most time spent writing research paper on yeshivas for judaism class, due next week)
fourth week in october--finish basic draft of thesis
fifth week in october--evaluate draft, begin planning presentation, plan for november

november--additional research/writing/reorganization as needed...major paper for philosophy class due at end of november, same time as thesis...deal with it

i think this should be enough to go on, at least for now. as you can see, october is going to suck for me, but i think i've set realistic goals here. let's hope this keeps me on track.

i am the blogmaster

a short clip from the press conference i stumbled upon back in january, the one that got me started on this whole alien/UFO kick:



i post this as an example of what's out there in "support" of the believers' side of the debate, as well as to remind myself of what it was like to experience these conflicting arguments firsthand (that is, in my own head). the stories get much weirder than this, too...if anyone has a couple of hours to kill, the full 2001 NPCC video can be found here.

rap session

my rap session, with ken johnson, took about 8 minutes. this is not a bad thing; ken came with exactly what i was looking for, which was a list of the major relevant journal/article databases in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. i think he was surprised that i had such specific requests for research help, and it gave me a boost of confidence to be able to show him that i had already begun searching on several of the databases he suggested and that i knew what i was doing. his lists of social science and humanities databases were especially helpful, since i have yet to do much searching outside of the sciences specifically. now i know where to look.

we also verified that my iLLiad account was still active and that i could remember my login and password. ken's other suggestion was to directly contact the professional/academic associations for each discipline i wanted to investigate and simply ask if there was anything like an "official" stance or theoretical perspective on the UFO/ET question, or at least those aspects of it with which each discipline would deal. i had thought of contacting individual researchers, but not these organizations. how cool will it be to write an association of physicists and ask how they treat journal/conference submissions concerning UFOs?!

ken was unable to answer one question i've come across: is there an established citation style for quoting a researcher's personal blog? is it of the same status as a website? (is the content of the same status?) i find that many physicists will openly speculate on the matter of UFOs on blogs...perhaps as an alternative to "publishing" on the matter?

does anyone know what MLA doctrine has to say about blogs?

proposal

(working) thesis title:

"The UFO/ET Debate: Science, Pseudoscience, and Argument"

(working) thesis:

The case against the idea that extraterrestrials have ever, or are currently, visiting our planet can be understood as falling generally in line with institutionalized scientific knowledge. By looking at the ways in which various academic disciplines treat the topic of UFOs/ETs, we can see how established disciplinary perspectives shape the arguments of "disbelievers" as well as how they contribute to the perception of "believers" as making irrational and unscientific claims. The case for the idea that the earth has been visited by extraterrestrials rests on arguments that are largely considered invalid by disciplinary/scientific standards; however, these arguments (and the evidence underlying them) may actually represent significant challenges to the very framework that rejects them. I will argue that it is the threat posed by the case for the reality of UFOs to our contemporary scientific understanding of the universe which accounts for its regular dismissal from the realm of "serious" scientific inquiry (as well as the realm of what most people are willing to believe), rather than the intrinsic scientific value of the arguments and evidence which comprise the case itself.

Or: how is it that evidence of UFO & ET-related phenomena comes to be dismissed before it is even considered? How is it that so many people refuse in principle to entertain the arguments advanced by the "believers?"

types of research, gathering data:

gather information from books and internet sources in order to accurately represent the arguments of both sides; extensively search journal databases to determine how the UFO/ET question is approached from disciplinary perspectives (i.e., Psychology/Sociology attempting to explain "abduction" as a mass delusion, Physics attempting to prove/disprove the possibility of interstellar travel, "paradigm shifts" in the Philosophy of Science, etc.); gather philosophical sources on scientific method, empiricism, and the treatment of anomalous evidence; gather philosophical/sociological sources on the relationship between scientific discourse and public opinion, the relationship between expert and common knowledge, etc.
-----------------------

hmmm...i still need to clarify this a bit. i need an outline and a finalized thesis statement. that's first on my timeline--let's say, by the end of this week.

Ph.D.'s reflect on grad school, higher ed

i know grad school is on many of our minds these days, so i thought i'd share some interesting threads i've recently come across in the blogging world.

this is a post from a feminist philosopher about what it's like to have a Ph.D. in terms of how academics (and the institutions that employ them) measure professional success and personal satisfaction. her advice to students will warm your hearts, i promise.


here is a post from over at crookedtimber.org, which is often host to these sorts of "internal conversations" between Ph.D.'s, journalists, and other representatives of the intelligentsia. it begins with a few links meant for people considering grad school, but the comment thread is loaded with useful information from readers who speak to the issue of pursuing post-graduate degrees from the perspectives of their fields/professions.

i always find it interesting to get a glimpse into the minds of people who are doing the kind of work i think i may one day want to be doing. perhaps one of you will find something relevant here.

(i'd also just like to say that coming across stuff like this makes me appreciate/think about the Praxis component of the IDS core. i think much of what i learned in my Praxis class--about the way higher ed. works, how disciplines work, etc.--is validated by seeing what these professionals have to say about their own experiences)

see?

something i suspected, but which was confirmed during my time in the library today:

try to find scholarly articles containing the keywords "ufo" and "extraterrestrial," and the overwhelming majority of your results will be from the fields of psychology and social psychology (sometimes sociology as well). almost without exception, the goal of these articles will be to explain how & why people come to believe that they've been abducted by aliens. certainly, these disciplines are not to be criticized for addressing issues which they see as reasonably falling within their rightful provinces...but can it be that the only academically interesting question regarding UFOs and extraterrestrials is a psychological one??

this is a good example of what i mean when i refer to the role that academic disciplines play in shaping the UFO/ET debate. academics are supposed to be experts, right? and we often defer to experts when attempting to settle disputes about which we suppose experts should have authoritative knowledge, right? well, with regard to the possibility that extraterrestrials might 1) exist, and 2) have visited our planet, the "experts" are predominantly--bordering on exclusively--concerned with how so many people can possibly have such similar delusions. discouraging.

lesson: sometimes academia is simply unable to play a meaningful (let alone helpful) role in your quest for knowledge, because academia is pretty sure you're just fucking nuts to begin with.