Jack Brewer's Blog, page 7

Normalizing the Fantastic and Resisting the Rational

"Why have we normalized speculating about alien bases on the moon yet vilify a person trying to explain strange occurrences with grounded explanations?" Twitter user Inquiring Josh recently tweeted. 

Why, indeed. The UFO genre has a long and troubled history of treating extreme claims as the norm. Casual talk of alien bases is often bandied about without so much as a raised eyebrow. It's common. As Inquiring Josh suggests, the situation is confounded by the typical knee jerk...

Be Good to Yourselves While Staying Home

Remember how in the movie Cast Away, the Tom Hanks character got so used to sleeping on the ground that, when he was rescued, he preferred it to a bed? That's an example of conditioned behavior. 

Once while I was on a Buddhist meditation retreat, the Sri Lankan monk leading the event explained he would rather sit in a lotus position than in a chair, even if he was watching television. He described how he found it uncomfortable to sit in a chair for long. He told us Westerners this to...

Para-Luxury

It's all fun 'n' games 'til real problems come along. 
The United States is far and away the global leader in number of annual reported UFO sightings and similar such phenomena. It could be debated whether my country has so many UFO researchers and organizations because we're such a hotbed of activity, or whether we have so much reported activity because so-called researchers and pop culture manufacture it, directly or indirectly. As a friend of mine used to say, "If you don't want to be...

Leah Haley, MUFON and NIDS

Following is from Chapter 13 of my 2015 book, The Greys Have Been Framed: Exploitation in the UFO Community . I find reflecting on it now to be timely and interesting.


Pensacola Beach, a short distance from Eglin Air Force Base
Leah Haley and the 139

[T]his is not a 'witch hunt' or any kind of a personal anything against John Carpenter. This is about those 140 abductees that have been screwed and used by John and to insure that there is never a repeat performance. I hope that you can appreciate...

NARA Tentatively Confirms 200-Page FBI File on NICAP Organizer

The existence of a 200-page FBI file likely pertaining to NICAP organizer Nicholas de Rochefort was acknowledged by the National Archives and Records Administration in a March 12, 2020 email. The file was compiled as part of an internal security investigation conducted between 1955 and 1964, according to the email, which also stated an initial assessment confirmed de Rochefort is, in fact, the subject of the file. 

In 1954 de Rochefort sought U.S. citizenship, and in 1956...

Scoles's 'They Are Already Here' a Page-Turner That Works

When journalist Sarah Scoles first contacted me to discuss some things for possible inclusion in her book, I felt the same way as when any media person wants to ask questions about UFO World: I want to answer their questions if I am able, but I fear they are looking for sensational material and ultimately won't want to hear what I have to say anyway. However, by the time I was finished talking by phone with the author, I was pleasantly surprised and optimistic a worthy work might be...

FBI Report: NICAP Organizer 'Good Propagandist'

The FBI file on Nicholas de Rochefort referenced in this post may be viewed at Keep&Share and Google Drive.

A file obtained from the FBI on Nicholas de Rochefort, a man credited with being an original organizer of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), contains a report describing him as "a good propagandist." The description was attributed to de Rochefort's former employer, Theodore Repplier, president of the Advertising Council. In the synopsis of the Nov. 27,...

Walsh Pasulka Revises Position on Police Reports

Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka seemingly reversed her position on her claim she reported an alleged Jan. 10 computer hack to police agencies after no corresponding records were located. A Feb. 6 post at The UFO Trail reported public records requests were submitted to three police agencies, including her university police, and no files of the January incident were found. Walsh Pasulka did not respond to an email which posed relevant questions and offered her an opportunity to comment for...

Police: No Records of Walsh Pasulka January Hack

Three separate North Carolina law enforcement agencies were queried for incident reports stemming from Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka's claims her email and social media accounts were recently hacked and that she reported it to police. Each of the three agencies responded no such records were located. 

The author of American Cosmic claimed her email and Twitter accounts were "hacked" on Jan. 10. She claimed similar two years ago. Her latest claims of hacked accounts came after a series of tweets...

Sincerity Is Not Synonymous with Accuracy

Dr. Christopher Cogswell and Marie Mayhew host the popular and informative The Mad Scientist Podcast. They recently wrapped up a six-episode, well-done series on Robert Bigelow. The series finale addressed salient issues of the Bigelow saga that are all too often omitted from discussion.

The podcast hosts contemplated the extent corruption may play a factor in deals such as Bigelow's corporation securing some $22 million in funds due to his pal, Senator Harry Reid. They also invited...