I’ve got some stuff in the pipeline, but nothing of length developed for today. I’m on the road once more (thrice in four weeks); my persistent foible is neglecting to work ahead.

Random thought of the day: Why is there even such a thing as a “ufologist”? Someone who studies UFOs? I mean, if you could study them in any meaningful, empirical capacity, they wouldn’t be U, would they?

“UFO” is not synonymous with “aliens”. It’s an acronym, standing for Unidentified Flying Objects. Nobody seems to realize that. I see UFOs all the time, although this is more due to my own ignorance than it is due to my propensity to be abducted by extraterrestrials. There are some lights in the sky at night. Are they on a plane? Possibly. It could be a helicopter. Could be a zeppelin, too—but I don’t know because I can’t see it. It’s dark!

These lights comprise an object. It is flying. I don’t know what it is. I can make an educated guess, but I don’t know for sure. Ergo, this object is a UFO.

Contrariwise, flying saucers are not UFOs. If you know it’s a saucer, it’s not unidentified. You might not have a lot of details about it, like what kind of technology it repressents, or who’s flying it—but do you have that info about airplanes? Not always. If you see a fighter jet, it’s got tons of classified information packed into it, so you probably don’t know much about that technology, either. You also don’t know who’s flying it. You could hazard a guess that the entity in the cockpit is human, but you don’t know. In other words, you have roughly the same information regarding an F/A-18 and a flying saucer, so if you wouldn’t consider the jet unidentified, you can’t consider the saucer unidentified either. It just so happens that jets are more common.

Having a ufologist is like having a detective who searches for darkness with his flashlight. I can’t imagine why anyone would even call themselves this. The person who does so is, by evidence of their title, so clueless about the very discipline they claim to be studying that they don’t even understand the meaning of the name they call themselves! I wouldn’t trust them to know very much about the subject.

-Ted