In the latest episode of Rogueplanet's "UFO MODPOD" podcast, Micah Hanks was interviewed by hosts Jason McClellan, Maureen Elsberry and Ryan Sprague. As usual, it was a terrific and entertaining episode, and Hanks raised a few interesting questions regarding science and philosophy. Citing a quote that claims the "death of philosophy" made by the famous scientist, Stephen Hawking, Hanks ponders whether science can progress without philosophy.

While Hanks raised a few interesting questions, one question came to my mind the next day that was touched on but never truly addressed in the episode.

Which discipline benefits the study of UFOs more; science or philosophy?

February 23rd has passed, and for those of you who remember, several weeks ago, I made a wager with Chris Rutkowski concerning the effect The X-Files would have on UFO sighting reports in North America.​

The results, now that the deadline has passed and The X-Files is officially over (for now), are interesting.

As many fathers do around this planet, I read bed time books to my baby daughter. Being that she is a new addition to our family, she enjoys tactile reads over solid plot development and rich characters...infants, what can you do?

​One of her favorites is the book pictured above. It's a new addition to her library and little did I know that the secret government project to slowly and quietly disclose the truth about aliens has violated her peaceful and blissfully ignorant existence. 

I recently had the pleasure to see filmmaker Jennifer Stein's 2015 documentary Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton. The 90 minute documentary focuses on one of, if not the, biggest UFO abduction cases in history.

In 1975, Travis Walton and his logging crew saw a strange light in a quiet remote forest in Arizona. The men entered the woods to explore the source of this light, and what they saw hovering in the clearing was beyond belief. There was a blinding flash of light and the men scrambled out of the woods back to their truck, but they were one man short; Travis allegedly was struck by a blast which left him crumpled on the forest floor. The men took off into the night, only to return a short time later, knowing they had to muster the courage to find their friend. When they returned to the clearing, Travis was gone. A frenzy ensues; the men are suspected of murdering their friend, they are put through polygraph testing and were even guarded by deputies while the local authorities searched for Travis in the forest. The world paid attention to the story of the missing Travis Walton and his coworkers who are blaming his disappearance on a flying saucer. The mystery only deepens when Travis Walton appears five days later on a lonely stretch of highway, tired, hungry, dehydrated, and with very few memories of what happened to him.

“The Straw-Man” is an idea that comes out of the discipline of rhetoric and argumentation. It is giving the impression that you are refuting another person’s argument or claim while not actually doing so. "The Straw-Man" fallacy basically creates the illusion that one has completely and totally refuted another’s claim by quietly replacing it with another proposition and then proceeding to defeat the false proposition instead of the original. In simple terms, you create a man built from straw, who is easier to defeat than the flesh and blood original.

This is a common tactic in Presidential debates and political maneuvering. "The Straw-Man" is  also the primary tool used in debunking large scale UFO sightings and incidents, predominantly when photographic and/or video evidence is present.

In response to a question from someone, I had found a review I had written many years ago of the first St. Paul UFO Conference in 1998. I was one of the invited speakers for the event.

I originally posted the review to the former UFO Updates, and I posted it recently to the new UFO Updates Facebook page. In case you didn't see it there, here's my review.
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