Since late last week, there has been a ton of news surrounding Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist who, according to some sources, had been appointed by the United Nations as Earth’s “go-to-gal” should a UFO ever land with occupants asking where our “leader” could be found. Othman, whose curious last name, paired along with her first initial, rather serendipitously spells “Mothman” (looks like John Keel was right after all), denies that any such title was awarded her in an official capacity, telling Matthew Weaver at The Guardian via email that, “It sounds really cool but I have to deny it.”
I first received word about all this last week from my partner in crime, Red Pill Junkie, with the astute journal of weekly Forteana The Daily Grail. Though I was, at the time, holed-up on one of the remotest of under-developed southern escapes imaginable–the notoriously-haunted Daufuski Island–I enjoyed the ensuing email exchanges as I received them on my Blackberry. “No way… That’s too weird,” my fellow Center for Fortean Zoology correspondent and renowned Texas cryptozoologist/ufologist Nick Redfern said. Loren Coleman, arguably the most well-versed of Mothman researchers around today since Keel’s passing, pointed out early on that the claims were bunk… but what cannot be refuted is Othman’s position on the UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs (in addition to her very weird name). If the UN should happen to have anything to do with exopolitical negotiations once E.T. does eventually touch down, Othman might arguably be involved in the ensuing affair. But are there others who might have a say in who would get to speak with aliens under such circumstances? If so, who might these “contact” individuals end up being?
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In Robert Heinlein’s libertarian Science Fiction masterpiece, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, a massive supercomputer named Mike, housed within a futuristic penal colony on the moon, suddenly “wakes up,” much to the surprise of his operators, becoming aware of his thought processes, and even capable of playing slightly sadistic jokes on those in his general vicinity. “They kept hooking hardware into him,” Heinlein’s narrator, Mannie, describes of the sentient machine. “Human brain has around ten-to-the-tenth neurons. By third year Mike had better than one and a half times that number of neuristors,” Mannie explains in his characteristically strange, slightly broken English. At this point, as a result of having so many separate streams of knowledge fed into his mechanical “brain,” Mike apparently became self aware.
While we’re discussing hypothetical circumstances (albeit fictional ones) where a mechanical “brain”–a computer, for instance–could become self aware, it is interesting to note that technological systems may already be closer to achieving full-blown sentience than we realize. Last year, I commented about a Belgian researcher who, among others in his field, believes the internet is exhibiting striking similarities to Heinlein’s fictional super-computer, and may already be showing signs of becoming self-aware… in some sense, at least.
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Perhaps you were walking through the attic of a run down, abandoned building; or maybe it was while passing a dark graveyard on your way home. Maybe your experience happened in your very own home… did you wake to find a terrifying, hooded entity standing over your bed in the wee hours of the morning?
At present, I have a variety of writing projects I’m working on, some of which may even have to be put on hold until I get other deadlines taken care of first. That said, I want to extend an invitation to Gralien Report readers from around the globe to share with me your own personal encounters with the strange and unusual, for an upcoming book I’ll be writing.
Specifically, I’m looking for creepy encounters with ghostly manifestations, or any other strange experience that seems to point to the existence of life after death and visitors from other realms. Send your stories to info@gralienreport.com, or you may use the comment feature below this post to share your true encounters with otherworldly presences.
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Commentary was recently featured here at The Gralien Report pertaining to an odd aerial display over Marco Island and Fort Myers Beach in Southern Florida Tuesday night, in which I featured excerpts from commentary from an area witness, Dr. Anthony Dallmann-Jones. He, along with his wife, managed to observe the objects in question on Tuesday night for nearly an hour, in addition to photographing them.
Although portions of the witnesses’ initial description of the phenomenon was consistent with the Air Force’s official explanation (that flares were being dropped from F-16 jets in a training operation), Dr. Dallmann-Jones was kind enough to take the time to contact me today to note what he perceives as discrepancies between this explanation and what he observed. What’s more, he tells me that the lights appeared again last night.
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