European Scientists Believe in Life on Mars – Reuters
Vittorio Formisano: ‘Hints of life on Mars are getting stronger. Life is probably the only source that can produce so much methane.’ And… Scientists Polled: 75 Percent Say Martian Life in Past Possible
UFO sightings soar, researchers puzzled by Paul Turenne, Winipeg Sun Staff Reporter, February 21, 2005
Either aliens are visiting Manitoban airspace more frequently, or the smoking ban has forced people to spend more time staring at the sky. Whatever the reason, a report released yesterday by Ufology Research of Manitoba states that there were 112 UFO sightings in Manitoba last year, which more than doubles the previous record for sightings and is more than four times as many as in 2003.
In fact, the 882 sightings across the country last year also constituted a record, but UFO researchers are baffled as to why. Read More.
Many report seeing Bigfoot in Virginia. One man is trying to prove it by Joanne Kimberlin, The Virginian-Pilot
February 21, 2005
William Dranginis shoots aerial thermal video over Dinwiddie County to test a camera he plans to use for his Bigfoot research.
MANASSAS — Those who know 46-year-old William Dranginis say he’s a levelheaded guy.
He has a sharp mind, an easy smile, an attractive family, a nice home and a trustworthy job designing surveillance equipment for the government.
But, 10 years ago, Dranginis says he crossed paths with something in the deep, dark woods of Culpeper County.
Snicker if you want, but his life has never been the same. Read More.
Museum Puts ‘Da Vinci Code’ on Trial in Leonardo’s Hometown
By The Associated Press / February 19, 2005 / NYTimes.com
OME, Feb. 18 (AP) – Art experts and conservative clerics are holding an unusual trial in Leonardo da Vinci’s hometown, aimed at sorting out fact from fiction in “The Da Vinci Code” after many readers took the hit novel as gospel truth.
The event in Vinci, just outside Florence, began Friday with an opening statement by Alessandro Vezzosi, director of a Leonardo museum. He said he would produce photographs and documents as evidence of mistakes and historical inaccuracies contained in the book, in which secret societies, code-breaking, art history and religious cabals and lore all play a major role.
“Leonardo is misrepresented and belittled,” Mr. Vezzosi said in a telephone interview hours before the event began. “His importance is misunderstood. He was a man full of fantasy, inventions and genius.”
Mr. Vezzosi said he would produce evidence through 120 photographs based on documents and paintings with the aim of “reassessing and disclaiming the author” of the book, Dan Brown. Mr. Vezzosi said one example of the mistakes contained in the book is the statement that the Mona Lisa was made in Leonardo’s image.
Several of the book’s plot twists have provoked unprecedented protest among Roman Catholic and Protestant conservatives, who contended that the characters maligned Christianity and inaccurately characterized its history. Read More.
NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars
By Brian Berger / Space News Staff Writer / Space.com
February 16, 2005WASHINGTON — A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.
The scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told the group that they have submitted their findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their paper currently is being peer reviewed. Read More.
NASA Statement on False Claim of Evidence of Life on Mars News reports on February 16, 2005, that NASA scientists from Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have found strong evidence that life may exist on Mars are incorrect.
NASA does not have any observational data from any current Mars missions that supports this claim. The work by the scientists mentioned in the reports cannot be used to directly infer anything about life on Mars, but may help formulate the strategy for how to search for martian life. Their research concerns extreme environments on Earth as analogs of possible environments on Mars. No research paper has been submitted by them to any scientific journal asserting martian life. www.NASA.gov
ARCHIVE NEWS:
Don’t Forget the Anomaly Archives Open House on Friday March 4th (More Info)
And … Free Public Lecture on Psychic Remote Viewing by Paul Smith on Tuesday, March 8th (More Info)
Call For Volunteers – The Anomaly Archives Needs Your Volunteer Help To:
Staff the Library from Noon to 5pm Saturdays & Sundays,
And for Weekday Hours Coming Soon
Duties Include General Library Circulation tasks, Research, Outreach and Special Projects.
For More Information About Volunteering with the Anomaly Archives Please …
One of the most anticipated mainstream treatments of the UFO phenomena generated quite a buzz, with talk of it’s alleged focus upon physical trace cases and official eye-witness testimony. It was suggested by some that it would be distancing itself from the alien abduction sub-mileue of the overrall UFO phenomena. ABC apparently cut out the last interview footage shot of Harvard abduction researcher John Mack (before his recent untimely death at the hands of a drunk-driving Londoner). It is no surprise then that the airing of the special has created a heated and varied debate with reviews as broad as the many views held by different ufo researchers. Here are just a sample…
Budd Hopkins’ Response to the ABC Peter Jennings “Seeing is Believing” TV Program –
Courtesy of the Intruders Foundation
During the past year Jenning’s producers interviewed me a number of times, and because I sensed what they had in mind, I made, as a preemptive strike, a number of careful, highly specific observations about the UFO abduction phenomenon. All of these crucial points – recorded by ABC on videotape – were designed to underline the physical reality of UFO abductions and to demonstrate the implausibility of current skeptical explanations.
To its shame, ABC suppressed ALL of these observations.
The definitive special about alien life …has yet to be made.
by Will Bueche
Peter Jennings’ report on UFOs was awaited with much excitement by people such as myself who have an interest in the subject of alien contact – excitement which was only partially tempered by the unfortunate news that the final interview given by Harvard’s Dr. John Mack, a leading authority on the subject of alien contact, would not be presented in the finished program. Still, the potential for a powerful program remained, due to the high quality work which Peter Jennings Productions are known for. I duly tuned in the broadcast this evening.
It seems that the best of what Peter Jennings Productions (and the filmmakers at Springs Media) delivered was a strong 20 or 30 minute introduction to the UFO subject, and then (much later in the program) an all-too-brief couple of minutes of modern perspectives on how alien visitation could be possible (from internationally recognized authority in theoretical physics Dr. Michio Kaku).
The first segment persuasively argued that early investigations of flying saucers on the part of the Air Force or government were so weak as to be considered a squandered opportunity for knowledge. But from that segment on, the program seemed rather uninspired.
If the program had taken the lead of modern scientists such as Dr. Michio Kaku or Brian Greene this program could have been a grand statement about the current theories and ideas about ufos/alien encounters, and how we might investigate them if we apply this modern knowledge. I refer to knowledge which – as anyone who has looked into alien encounters would appreciate – involves theoretical physics’ insights into the structure of reality as well as theories of consciousness or, to put it more simply, theories of how perception of reality is affected by different states of consciousness.
Instead, modernity was given a couple good minutes of limelight (in the form of Dr. Kaku explaining how modern physics believes that seemingly vast distances between worlds could be crossed in an instant) followed by far too many people who are retreading theories of the 1970s – including present day researchers who are parroting theories from that era (the people from SETI, Harvard’s Dr. McNally, and – to be entirely fair – even some “pro” ufo folks).
If only Jennings’ program had been as fascinated by contemporary theories as they were by the early days of the UFO era. It was evidently not to be, and therefore this special was itself an opportunity squandered.
Sadly, the definitive special about alien life has yet to be made.
I’m not a Ufologist, per se, but merely a Fortean researcher and
writer. So I watched _the_ program, anyway, out of curiosity and
to see how ABC News dealt with this subject. My first reactions:
Very well-done. High production values, not sensationalized, and
quite intelligent. <snip>
All in all, an excellent addition to the documentary attempts to
address the question of UFOs.
Bruce Maccabee pitches in with some corrective comments and critiques on the ABC Special ranging from the confusion over the two distinct “UFO” events collectively known as the “Phoenix Lights” …
Kudos to Michio for pulling our theoretical irons out of the fire. Oddly enough, he was saying what is in the recently
published “Inflation” paper mentioned previously on this List:
we ought to examine UFO sightings on the off chance that one or
more might actually be evidence of a far advanced civilization.
As Kaku said: “Let the investigation begin.”
Meanwhile from the New York Times we get these gems … attempting to put Jennings’ decision to cover UFOs squarely in the category of ‘career advancement’ and ratings …
NYT – TV REVIEW | ‘PETER JENNINGS REPORTING’
An ABC Documentary Lands in U.F.O. Territory By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
During a sweeps month, U.F.O. is not solely an abbreviation for unidentified flying object. When a veteran network anchor devotes two hours to the subject in a special prime-time report, U.F.O. can also be code for uncontrollable fear of obscurity.
Tom Brokaw’s retirement as the NBC anchor did not drive viewers to ABC en masse; actually, the ratings of his replacement, Brian Williams, are higher than Peter Jennings’s. Even Dan Rather’s fall from grace and imminent retirement have not significantly benefited ABC’s “World News Tonight.” And that may help explain the mystery of why Mr. Jennings, ABC’s lofty and fastidious anchorman, chose to lend his gravitas to a lengthy examination of extraterrestrial life forms.
Space aliens are not particularly timely. Newspapers are not brimming with fresh reports of mass sightings of bright lights hovering over the Mojave Desert. Steven Spielberg does not have a sci-fi sequel, “Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind,” in the works. And no one would argue that this is a slow news period.
But the race for ratings is particularly intense in February. Mr. Jennings points out in his introduction that as many as 80 million Americans believe in U.F.O.’s and that 40 million say they have seen one or know someone who has. If even a fraction of those people turn to ABC tonight, “U.F.O.’s: Seeing Is Believing” could do for Mr. Jennings what more somber special reports like last June’s “Guantánamo Bay” could not.
Not that this special report is a day at the beach. Mr. Jennings applies the same solemn, impassive tone he used to examine Christianity in his special report “Jesus and Paul: The Word and the Witness” last April. He does not try to prove or debunk the existence of U.F.O.’s. Instead, he handles Ufology, as he refers to it, like a religion whose followers are numerous and steadfast enough to merit respectful treatment.
And that is not inappropriate. Ufology has many of the rites and rhythms of more traditional faiths, and the skeptic-turned-convert is a crucial element in any belief system. The millions of followers of Padre Pio, a 20th-century friar who was said to have had stigmata and supernatural powers and was canonized in 2002, bolster their case by pointing out that Father Maccari, a Vatican investigator sent to prove the friar a fraud, later recanted and prayed to Padre Pio on his deathbed (at least according to a Capuchin publication, “The Voice of Padre Pio”).
The documentary showcases a U.F.O. version of Father Maccari: J. Allen Hynek, an astrophysicist and a consultant for an Air Force project created in 1952 to assess U.F.O. reports. Early on, he dismissed witnesses as crackpots. He later repented and went on to found the Center for U.F.O. Studies in Illinois. He was one of the first scientists to give the study an aura of respectability. (Dr. Hynek came up with the phrase “close encounters of the third kind,” which Mr. Spielberg used for his film title.)
The history of U.F.O. sightings is interspersed with contemporary accounts by witnesses: housewives, pilots and truck drivers who do not look or sound like crackpots and who matter-of-factly describe what they saw that turned them into believers. (“It arched over the top of our car. …”) The most recent well-known incident was reported over Phoenix in 1997, when hundreds of people said they saw strange lights overhead that did not resemble an airplane or a helicopter. One man videotaped some of what he saw: a row of lights in the sky that he said were atop some kind of spaceship. The tape is not very distinct, however. Mostly, ABC uses animation to recreate what the witnesses say they saw.
The U.F.O. is a topic usually relegated to the tabloids, but Mr. Jennings gives the phenomenon his full consideration. “Seeing Is Believing” is not likely to create a new army of converts, but it may draw viewers who are already convinced and hungry for network affirmation: believing is seeing.
Finally, we leave you with these angry words from Abductee and Researcher Whitley Strieber, via his on-line Journal Entry at UnknownCountry.com :
The Scum Rises: Peter Jennings on UFOs
The much heralded ABC special on UFOs has come and gone. Predictably, it was more of the same, a large number of lies sprinkled with a few truths. At least it wasn’t as relentlessly negative as such programs have generally been in the past. But people like Peter Jennings and his producers are cursed with the belief that they can understand—or already do understand—what they are looking at. The reality is that the UFO phenomenon is the most complex event in history, and a cursory examination of its surface by a few overworked and ill-informed television producers is not going to succeed in any way whatsoever to come to any truth about it.
They are filled with belief in their own competence, however. The result is that their efforts become an exercise in hubris. They end up making judgements based on inadequate information because they believe that what they have gathered is sufficient. But it is not sufficient, it only fulfills their expectations and serves their assumptions. That’s always where they stop, and it’s never enough.
Periodicals Update – Anomaly Archives volunteers have been hard at work cataloging the enormous collection of magazines and other periodicals across the various collections. At last count we had cataloged over 800 individual volumes with over 150 periodicals in the Austin MUFON collection, over 350 in the Jung Society collection and over 200 in the main Anomaly Archives collection. A number of rare zines from the 1980s / 90s “zine scene” makeup the core of the Archives Periodical collection. Here are some samples from the collections and links to “current” online websites for each magazine.
Friday, March 4th – The Human Potential Center presents an …
“Open Campus / Open House“ featuring the Grand Opening of the INACS Headquarters on site as well as an Open House at the Anomaly Archives.
DATE CHANGE! Saturday – Sunday, AUGUST 5th & 6th – R2UFOs.com hosts Kenny & Virginia present …
“Texas UFO Conference“ in Round Top, Texas. Speakers Include: Travis Walton, Stan Friedman, Richard Dolan, Derrel Sims, Jim Hickman, Don Schmitt, Dennis Balthsayer, Charles Hall, Tom Carey, Paola Harriss, and Special Celebrity Guest Mr. Roy Thinnes who starred as David Vincent in the Invaders, and as Jeremiah Smith in the X-Files. www.R2UFOs.com
Tuesday, March 8th – Austin IONS and the Anomaly Archives presents …
“America’s Psychic Espionage Program“ by former military remote viewer Paul Smith at the Austin History Center (9th and Guadalupe) from 6:30 – 8:30 pm. Free Event.
Tuesday, May 10th – Austin IONS a, INACS, and the Jung Society presents …
This paper was presented at the 10th Biennial Convention of the Association for Psychological Type in Newport Beach, California, 1993. Starts at 6:30pm at the Austin History Center located at 810 Guadalupe Street. Free Event. For more information call 478-6461.
LAST WORD:
This new monthly Anomaly Archives eNews update is available in your email inbox or here on the web at www.AnomalyArchives.org/enews/
And just a quick reminder – this Anomaly Archives eNews update is free to the public and can be delivered directly to your email in box or viewed online at the websites of the Scientific Anomaly Institute’s Anomaly Archives.
Anomaly Archives lending library members, besides having lending privileges for the entire collections (including those of partnered organizations) get first look at the quarterly printed issues of the Anomaly Archivist Newsletter before it’s posted online for the general public here:
EVENTS:
Podcast Now Available 
European Scientists Believe in Life on Mars – 
February 21, 2005
Museum Puts ‘Da Vinci Code’ on Trial in Leonardo’s Hometown
NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars
NASA Statement on False Claim of Evidence of Life on Mars News reports on February 16, 2005, that NASA scientists from Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have found strong evidence that life may exist on Mars are incorrect.
One of the most anticipated mainstream treatments of the UFO phenomena generated quite a buzz, with talk of it’s alleged focus upon physical trace cases and official eye-witness testimony. It was suggested by some that it would be distancing itself from the alien abduction sub-mileue of the overrall UFO phenomena. ABC apparently cut out the last interview footage shot of Harvard abduction researcher John Mack (before his recent untimely death at the hands of a drunk-driving Londoner). It is no surprise then that the airing of the special has created a heated and varied debate with reviews as broad as the many views held by different ufo researchers. Here are just a sample…
The definitive special about alien life …has yet to be made. 
ABC – A First Reaction From Outside Ufology by Loren Coleman
ABC Jennings Special – 
An ABC Documentary Lands in U.F.O. Territory 
The Scum Rises: Peter Jennings on UFOs 
The much heralded ABC special on UFOs has come and gone. Predictably, it was more of the same, a large number of lies sprinkled with a few truths. At least it wasn’t as relentlessly negative as such programs have generally been in the past. But people like Peter Jennings and his producers are cursed with the belief that they can understand—or already do understand—what they are looking at. The reality is that the UFO phenomenon is the most complex event in history, and a cursory examination of its surface by a few overworked and ill-informed television producers is not going to succeed in any way whatsoever to come to any truth about it.
