Responses, at Facebook, to my "UAP con" post there

Dwaine Sharpe [Zoam Chomsky]:

Thank you my beloved Saucerian for the first laugh of the day! The conspiracy that never ends ….

Rich Reynolds:

It’s my offset to Friday the 13th Luv ya buddy.

Stephen Miles Lewis:

Meh, they are both just placeholders for WTF.

I’ve always liked UAP since first hearing it many years ago. But I prefer my Unassimilated Fantastic Observations but that plays right into what yer on about…I also always liked John Judge’s Unrecognized Fascist Observatories.

Christopher Bales:

The term Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon is almost as old as the phrase Unidentified Flying Object. Not much new on that front. The thing that is new is that political figures have decided to re-brand the old phrase by creating an acronym for it, with the guise that it sanitizes the issue. “That’s because we want to destigmatize the reporting for our aviators, so they don’t hesitate to tell us what they have seen.” Navy Spks Gradisher see https://ufoissue.com/uap-means-ufo-a-terminological-history/ ) Is the intent to “memory hole” any associations with “little green men”? I doubt it, but I never leave a good conspiracy theory off the table until proven otherwise 

Geoffrey Cox:

I look at the term “UFO” to be used prior to the year 2000, with more truth in observations then, less technology in the sky or on the ground (computers) to falsify.

“UAP” to be used after the year 2000, this gets rid of an old stigma for the last 73 years, an update of terminology like (using flap, instead of “wave” or “surge”), or… should we just go back to the 60′s Twilight Zone using Anomalous Aerial Object (AAO) and put this all to rest for the world! 

Rich Reynolds:

Fellows, I’d be happy going back to “Flying Saucer” but that ain’t gonna happen.

Ah, the good old days. How some of us miss them.

Robert Sheaffer:

The “Flying Saucer Physicist” never changed his moniker!

Gary Harris:

I like “anomalous aerial vehicles”.

Rich Reynolds:

Me too…although the masses may not.

Rich Reynolds:

Robert, I gave that guy a hearty thumbs up but tempered it with a later note at my blog. His nephew excoriated me for slighting his uncle in my assessment of who will be remembered when UFOs (or the UAP) are finally “soluted.”

Nick Pope:

The UK Ministry of Defence didn’t invent the term UAP, but it was our adoption of it in the Nineties that was to have such an effect on the US government’s line on the issue, as confirmed by US Navy spokesperson Joseph Gradisher’s 2019 statement that the term “was borrowed from the United Kingdom”. But to clarify, we never intended this as a rebranding exercise for the media and the public. It was purely for our internal policy discussions, where escaping the pop culture baggage associated with the term “UFO” was an essential prerequisite for our strategic aim of securing senior stakeholder buy-in for more pro-active policies on the topic.

Rich Reynolds:

Nick, I was almost being flippant with my posting here, but agree that the “pop culture baggage” had to be and has to be contended with. For me, it’s the open-ended trope that irks: aerial phenomena. That allows the examination of orbs, insects, blobs and blurs, et cetera to be included in the flying object category, something that has already cluttered the subject. As a topic, UFO is already a mess. Supplanting it with aerial phenomena just expands that mess.

Jim Speiser:

…or it simply might be the military’s attempt to widen out the parameters to include those phenomena that DON’T fit the outlines of the classic solid object UFO, yet are still of great interest. “Sky worms”, for example, or the saucer-shaped hole in a cloud over ohare. I don’t see great harm in this – WE know what we’re talking about.

Rich Reynolds:

Jim, I’m thinking that “sky worms” or orbs and other peripheral meteorological “phenomena” takes us (and real researchers) away from the UFO/flying saucer phenomena “we” are absorbed with. (That O’Hare hole is interesting, but only because it seems to have been made by a “flying object.” But I get your point.)

Rich Martin:

UAP is not a new acronym. ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon” appears in a 1949 FBI memo on the subject.

Rich Reynolds:

Rich, I know that UAP has been inserted as a sobriquet for “flying disk phenomena” before…..when the FBI didn’t want to give concrete form to what people were seeing. UAP was errant in 1949 and moreso now. But I appreciate the reference nonetheless.

Christopher O’Brien:

I like Ray Stanford “anomalous aerial objects” AAO

Rich Reynolds:

The problem for me is Stanford….(Sorry Chris)

Christopher O’Brien:

No problem. You’ve never had the opportunity to fully appreciate and understand his genius.

Rich Reynolds:

I know he’s done some terrific things. (I found an old newspaper story, when he was just a young guy, in which he was noted for his remarkable insights. I put it on my blog then.) I just can’t forgive him for goofing up the Socorro symbol. 

Christopher O’Brien:

He didn’t goof up the Socorro symbol, he found the proof that he didn’t w/ James Fox in the National Archives.

Rich Reynolds:

Christopher, I’ll check it out.

Preston Padgett:

So what do you think we are dealing with here?

Rich Reynolds:

You mean Preston the UAP inundation that is flooding the UFO topic? My posting above indicates my thinking, opinion. Otherwise, I am flummoxed as much as everyone else here and in the UFO community itself.

Preston Padgett:

 I guess my question would be if you think UAP is muddying the waters and that the typical “alien” aspect of the core story is disinfo, what do you think could be behind the curtain?

Rich Reynolds:

At my blog I’ve been posting, for a long time, that it’s not the ET explanation, but present no epiphany on my part as to what UFOs (or the UAP) may be. But I think that a “capture” — not necessarily a physical effort — an internal review of the phenomenon will tell us from whence they come or what their essence is. UFOs are a true enigma, fraught with a clue or revelation of what our reality really is. The AATIP “things” may be advanced aircraft or the real thing: those damnable UFOs that have sneaked into our lives off and on for almost ever. What they are remains, for me, as much a mystery as they are for most persons in the UFO community (not the UAP community, whatever that may be).

http://ufocon.blogspot.com – The UFO Iconoclast(s)