By Bob Gaydos

Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is watching for his children at his house when something strange is happening in the sky over the Bayonne Bridge. “War of the Worlds,” 2005.

 “We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin. The aliens have returned to New Jersey. … and, apparently, everywhere else.“

   Eighty-six years after Orson Welles created widespread panic with his Halloween radio broadcast of HG Wells’ “War of the Worlds,“ with spacecraft, piloted by non-humans launching attacks all over New Jersey, strange spacecraft are now being seen again, all over the skies of New Jersey. 

    Well, actually, this time they are real, not the center of a well-done radio drama that played on the imagination of listeners. But this time, there are no attacks. That we know of.

     However, the government, which is to say all the agencies responsible for policing and protecting the skies above the United States of America, are acting like this is a radio drama.

    Hear no evil, see no evil. Your eyes aren’t seeing what they’re seeing. Forget those video tapes. These objects, supposedly drones, represent no known threat. There are no foreign actors involved. But we don’t know what they are. Or, if we do, we’re not telling you. Trust us.

     Yeah, folks, it’s the wrong time for that trust us approach. Especially with large drone-like objects that first manifested over New Jersey now showing up in the skies over New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and even on the West Coast.

     For a month now, reports of unusual drone activity have been filling TV news reports with the same basic information: Average citizens see the drones, some take pictures, some take videos, and all wonder what’s going on. They contact public officials, who wonder what’s going on. They contact federal agencies who are supposed to know what’s going on and they tell us don’t worry, there’s no evidence of a threat. Period. Oh, yeah, also don’t shoot at whatever they are because it could be dangerous. So it sounds like they know what’s going on, but don’t want to tell us, which is frustrating, if not scary, or they don’t know what’s going on and don’t want to tell us which is scarier.

     So naturally, conspiracy theories crop up about aliens (most people I talked with felt aliens would be too smart to bother with us). One other theory I found interesting was that it was a “psyops” operation by the government or some group to either divert our attention from some real news (governments around the world are collapsing, the incoming Cabinet nominees are a disaster), or to frighten us into giving the incoming administration more powers to deal with perceived threats. 

  The latter would be accomplished by the likes of Elon, Jeff, and all the other Trump-happy billionaires and their tech savvy minions with their AI, driverless cars, super chips, spaceships and Metasphere. What’s a few big drones?

    Now, as usual, it may turn out to be something more down to earth and troublesome. I heard one of those New Jersey mayors talking on TV about a briefing in which some federal officials said something about radioactive material going missing at Newark Airport. Coincidentally, about a month ago. Nobody knows where it is. Federal government likes to keep track of where this stuff is. If you’re searching, you would start in New Jersey and spread out to New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. After that, wherever the clues lead you. That would include closing down runways at Stewart International Airport in the Hudson Valley for an hour.

    What this would mean is that our government has such mega drones, ready for use for such reconnaissance and search operations. Good to know. Not good to know is that some potentially hazardous material managed to somehow disappear from one of our airports. Maybe that’s what the government really doesn’t want us to know. 

   If that’s the case, I think someone made a bad decision in trying to act as if what we were seeing wasn’t happening. If you tell us what’s going on just maybe someone will have seen or heard something that could help find the stuff you’re looking for. Isn’t that how the FBI works?

   Then all the TV reporters could go back to pretending they’re covering the news.

    Apropos of nothing really, the New Jersey connection with aliens and “War of the Worlds” was repeated in 2005 when Tom Cruise starred in the movie version of the HG Wells novel. It was set in Bayonne, N.J., featuring shots of the beautiful Bayonne Bridge.

     Also, Orson Welles apologized to the nation after he scared the bejezus out of people with his Halloween broadcast. Whatever happens with the radioactive material, if that’s what’s going on, President Biden should do the same. Tell us what you know, Joe. Heck, at this point, aliens would be a welcome relief.

By Bob Gaydos

Trump and Harris at the debate.

 “First you say you do and then you don’t.

   Then you say you will and then you won’t.

    You’re undecided now, so what are you gonna do?”

     Those are the lyrics to a song that was popular in the ‘40s and ‘50s, recorded by, among others, Ella Fitzgerald and the Ames Brothers.

       A simple song for a simpler time. Today, the song’s predicament remains the same. Someone has extreme difficulty making up his or her mind. But there is a heightened urgency to a need for the answer and growing frustration with those who can’t provide it.

        Yeah, we’re talking about those “undecided” voters who watched the recent debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and still can’t figure out who they want to be President of the United States.

        Really?

        Harris was cool, calm and confident, exactly what one would hope of the current vice president of the United States, also a former senator and prosecutor. She spoke from experience and with compassion. She mostly didn’t try to evade questions and definitely didn’t make stuff up.

   Trump?

    On abortion: “They’re executing newborn babies.”

    Out of the blue: “They’re performing transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison.”

     Immigration: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in (Haitian immigrants). They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

     On replacing Obamacare: Moderator (frustrated) : “So just yes or no. You do have a plan?

      Trump: “I have concepts of a plan.”

       The rest was mostly stream-of-consciousness blaming of immigrants for imagined increases in crime rates, defensiveness over the size of crowds at his rallies, mumbo jumbo about tariffs and praise for the two most dangerous leaders in Europe, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Also a lot of angry faces.

        And yet, some people described by various media outlets as “undecided voters” in a very close contest, said they still haven’t decided which of the candidates they would like to hold the most powerful office on the planet. 

        Whew…. I don’t know who these people are but, you know what, I don’t believe some of them and, in these changing times, the rest will just have to change their tune and, as Paul Simon sang, “Get on the bus, Gus,” and set themselves free with President Kamala Harris.   

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

A version of what some flat earthers believe our planet looks like.

 The Earth is not flat.

  UFOs do exist.

      In this debate about the nature of the universe, I am definitely taking sides.

     A bit of explanation: Firmly ensconced in the second year of Covid-inspired couch-surfing, we stumbled across a documentary called “Beyond the Curve.” I can’t shake the topic — flat earthers. Even in this era of anti-science, conspiracy-obsessed politics, this one baffled me. Still does.

     The movie focuses on three main characters, none of whose names I will use here so as not to give them any more notoriety than they already have. The main character is the apparent flat earth guru, A middle-aged guy with a YouTube show, who, for reasons that still escape me, decided at some point in his life that the Earth is not round. This, even though he can’t prove it. And even though fLat earthers’ own experiments in the film indicate otherwise.

        He believes the Earth is a flat disc surrounded by a wall of ice and covered by a gigantic dome on which someone (the government) projects images of the sun and the moon, which move continually across the fake sky.

         There’s also another, angrier wanna-be guru, who resents the main character’s influence among the believers, and a woman who has become a YouTube star among flat earthers with her “reporting“ on the issue. The group has annual international conferences.

          It’s difficult for me to be as respectful of the believers as the film is because no one in the film ever explains why he or she believes the Earth is flat. Nor does anyone disprove the existing science that proves otherwise. And, as I’ve said, the believers’ own experiments disprove their belief. So something else is at work here.

           Before I speculate on that, let me address that debate I introduced at the top. Obviously, UFOs exist because there have been countless sightings of unidentified flying objects by all sorts of people, Including Navy pilots. It doesn’t mean these are necessarily spaceships from somewhere else in the solar system, piloted by aliens, but I believe the odds are much greater of this possibility than that we are living under a gigantic dome. I paid attention in science class.

             (In the interest of full disclosure, I must report that I live in an area that has been described as the UFO capital of the Northeast. I myself have never seen a UFO, but the hamlet of Pine Bush has a UFO festival every summer, including a parade down Main Street. There’s even a museum. And yes, there have been numerous reported sightings in the area.)

             I guess I’m with Enrico Fermi on this. His paradox wonders why, given the preponderance of information that suggests a seemingly limitless universe, filled with countless planetary bodies, no one has apparently yet decided to pay us a visit. Maybe we haven’t noticed or maybe they can’t get through the dome. 

               Which brings me back to the Earth is not flat. To me, saying the Earth is flat without providing any evidence and indeed, in the face of evidence to the contrary, is akin to saying a presidential election was rigged without providing any evidence and in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It’s akin to saying vaccines don’t protect people from viruses and face masks don’t help stop the spread of viruses based solely on a “belief“ and in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It’s akin to saying there was no violent effort to prevent certification of a presidential election at the United States Capital on January 6 when I saw the insurrection with my own eyes on TV, along with millions of other people.

               Some people, for whatever reason, are easily swayed. They will accept even the illogical because they can feel part of something. It provides an identity. Some people, for purely selfish reasons, gain their identity by swaying people to accept even the irrational. If people stop believing what they say, they lose their identity.

             So, if I am not a man cheated out of the presidency, as I claim, then who am I? Or if the Earth is not flat, as I say, then who am I?

           The answer in the first case is simple: You’re a loser.

            In the second case, it’s more complicated. Maybe you’re someone who needed to pay more attention in science class. Maybe you’re someone who never learned it’s OK to say you were wrong. Maybe you’re someone who needs to find a more productive way to gain people‘s approval. Maybe you’re someone who needs to keep walking in the same direction until you either bump into a glass wall or fall off the edge. 

           Or maybe you’re someone who needs to visit Pine Bush next summer when, hopefully, the UFO parade will be held again. Maybe you’re someone who needs to turn your gaze from down to Earth to up, up and beyond. These are true believers, too, but, unlike yours,  their belief has some legitimate science behind it. 

           I understand they’re always looking for new converts. You’d be quite a challenge, but  think of the new identity: The man who stepped back from the edge to play among the stars. Has a nice ring to it. Probably play well on YouTube, too. Just remember your new slogan. The Earth is not flat.

rjgaydos@gmail.com.

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

The monolith in Utah. The first of three that have mysteriously appeared.

     They’re here. 

      Who’s here? Where?

     Them! They’re here. Well, actually, they seem to be everywhere.

       Who?

       Them. You know, the ones who planted a 10-foot tall, three-sided silver monolith into the rocky ground of an isolated section of southeast Utah populated only by bighorn sheep. Not to mention another monolith in Romania and another one in California. What a week. No sooner did one disappear than another appeared. It’s like a game of musical monoliths, without the music. As far as we know.

        What do you mean?

       Well, the three monoliths all popped up, seemingly out of nowhere, in remote areas of the planet, at the same time the Arecibo Radio Observatory, our famed ear to the universe, was falling down on itself in Puerto Rico. It’s almost as if there’s a silent message in the monoliths.

         But the Utah monolith was gone two days after it appeared — what’s up with that?

        Well, it was reportedly carted off by a bunch of preserve the wilderness types. “Leave no trace,” you know? Their thinking is that some artist planted the monolith in a desolate part of Utah, but that it really belonged in a museum. A lot of people made the connection with the “2001”  monolith. A joke, they said. In any event, the wilderness group apparently tracked it down — like a lot of other people – knocked it down and took it away, rivets and all. The removers also supposedly said they didn’t think it was safe to have a lot of people wandering around in such rugged, isolated country looking for the object.

       Somebody supposedly also took pictures of the whole removal operation and some people wrote media reports on it. Everyone said definitively that the monolith wasn’t the work of extraterrestrials. After all, it had rivets.

        Now, I’m not a big conspiracy guy, but I’m also more inclined to go with synchronicity over coincidence. And, our government has been known to hide information pertaining to possible connection with alien contact. No one knows who planted the Utah monolith and no one checked on the crew that removed it. And no one knows how the one in Romania appeared and disappeared. Or where the one in California came from.

       So what are you saying?

      Think about it. The planet is a mess right now. Pandemic — a million-and-a-half deaths. Global warming. Widespread hunger.  Economic instability. Polluted waters. Constant war. Racial strife. Trump.

       Too much entropy. Disorder on a global scale. The universe, we believe, prefers order. It might have grown tired of waiting for our tiny part of it to figure things out and sent some clues to help restore some sense of order. I think they may have finally lost patience with us. I mean, time may be relative and all, but even the universe apparently has its limits. Enough is enough, you know?

      What could the message possibly be? Maybe, take a break from killing each other. Stop polluting your air and water. Learn to live with all forms of life so you don’t kill yourselves with disease. Share your food. Educate your young people. Live by the rules your religions profess. Love and respect one another. We are all in this together.

        The message and the means to lowering the entropy may well have been contained in one or all of the monoliths, but we couldn’t decipher it. Or not. The monoliths may simply have been planted to get our attention off the chaos we have caused. But by whom?

        I live in an area known as the UFO capital of the Northeast. Pine Bush, N.Y. I know no one has reported seeing any UFOs in connection with any of the monoliths, but who says extraterrestrials have to travel only in ways that we earthlings can imagine. Maybe they don’t need rockets to move through time and space. Maybe they look like us. Maybe they’re not green. Who knows? In any event, I wouldn’t mind seeing one of these monoliths appear in our neighborhood. Smack dab in the middle of Main Street in front of Pudgy’s’ pizzeria. I can pretty much guarantee there wouldn’t be a great rush to tear it down and cart it off to who knows where. Some people around here are serious about learning about intelligent life not of this planet.

       We earthlings are predictably set in our ways of thinking of many things, including extraterrestrial intelligence. Little green men and UFOs. They don’t use rivets. Or stainless steel. But why not? How do we know? Yes, maybe these really were just clever pranks by an international — synchronistic? — conspiracy of artists. Maybe we should then thank them for reminding us of our infinitesimal place in the universe and how we’re destroying it. And, maybe we should try to think about where the idea for such a conspiracy came from in the first place. Maybe Arecibo wasn’t the only way to receive messages from elsewhere. Maybe the universe has other ways of communicating. Maybe there’s a message right before our eyes.

         Never mind out there; maybe they’re here already.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is artist-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

The Arecibo Message … sent in 1974

I pause in my search for intelligent life in the White House to ruminate on another project which may well promise quicker results — the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

The search is known as METI: Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This is not to be confused with SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), which deals with searching for messages from aliens. To/from. Therein lies the difference as well as a major scientific/philosophical dispute.

The SETI project was popularized in the novel, “Contact,” by astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who was central, along with astronomer, astrophysicist Frank Drake, in creating the program by which huge radio telescopes have listened for decades — still do — for signals from far-distant civilizations.

The book was later made into a movie starring Jodie Foster. You may remember it. It vaguely resembles the book, which I only recently finished reading as part of my return-to-reading movement that was sparked by a “sudden” appreciation of the science of synchronicity. In brief, I started noticing that coincidences led to more coincidences — books led to other books, ideas to other ideas, etc. — and that I ignored the connection between events/people/things at my own loss.

There was a reason that article by Steven Johnson about METI appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine two weeks ago. It was to catch me up on where the search for evidence of life elsewhere in the universe had gone since Sagan’s book was published in 1985. What purpose it may have served for you, I haven’t a clue, but for me it meant there was probably some issue to write about that could lead to more fruitful thought than that monotonous White House disaster.

The fact that I live in Pine Bush, a hamlet in upstate New York known as the UFO capital of the Northeast, just clinched the deal. Of course, in Pine Bush there are quite a few people who believe that extraterrestrials have already been here more than once. Checking us out. Maybe so, but since I have yet to experience a UFO, I’m interested in the debate going on over SETI vs. METI.

It boils down to: It’s all well and good to listen for messages from outer space. If we receive one, it means there is other life out there. We can then decide how, or whether, to respond. The hesitation has to do with not knowing if the other life is friendly or not. If we send out a big hello to the universe, the nay-sayers argue, any civilization that receives it will be far more advanced than ours and could well look upon us as Columbus did on the Native Americans. As Stephen Hawking, the most prominent METI nay-sayer, pointed out, that experience “did not go well” for the Native Americans. Do not advertise our presence, he says, and Elon Musk and many other scientists agree.

But many others disagree, arguing that another civilization, advanced enough to receive our message, would likely also be advanced enough to  understand the value of being peaceful.

So, what to do?

METI’s web page lists several objectives, including:

• “Promote international cooperation and collaboration in METI, SETI, and astrobiology.
• “Understand and communicate the societal implications and relevance of searching for life beyond Earth, even before detection of extraterrestrial life.
• “Research and communicate to the public the many factors that influence the origins, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe …”

I’d say the non-profit agency has noble, worthwhile goals. It’s the kind of project that could serve to remind all of us Earthlings of our relative insignificance in the universe and serve as a unifying, educational mission for our querulous planet. Of course, with even scientists being in disagreement about whether to send or just keep listening, I’m skeptical about political leaders being able to reach agreement. In fact, there’s an argument just waiting for the anti-science crowd to adopt: The Fermi Paradox.

Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist who created the first nuclear reactor, asked (I paraphrase): If the universe is so big (100 billion galaxies, 50 sextillion Earth-like planets) and so old (13.82 billion years), there should be 10,000,000,000,000,000 intelligent civilizations in the observable universe and, after millions of years of technological progress, an alien civilization should be capable of long-distance space travel. So where is everyone?

Well, as I said, there are some neighbors of mine who say aliens have already been here. How could we miss them? Government coverup of UFO sightings is a popular — and not wholly dismissible — theory.

Either way, I say the METI people — who used to be the SETI people — have the right idea. Be pro-active. Send out a big hello to the universe. An inter-galactic tweet. Get an international group of smart, sensitive people from various walks of life to create it. Set up contingencies for what to do if we get a reply … or a visit. War or peace. Then push the button over and over again for however long it takes for some life form out there to receive and understand it.

For the record, a three-minute message was sent out to the universe from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in 1974, under the direction of Drake. It has yet to reach its destination, but it drew immediate strong opposition from the Royal Astronomer of England at the time, who, like Hawking, warned of placing the earth in peril. Since then, we’ve been mostly listening.

I don’t expect to be around when the message is received — they’re talking about light years here, remember — but I do think it’s the synchronistic thing to do. Someone has to get the ball rolling. Douglas Vakoch, the head of METI, says the fears are exaggerated. He thinks 100 years of television and radio signals sent into space should have — for better or worse — already alerted aliens to our existence and he plans to start sending messages next year.

So … hello, world.

rjgaydos@gmail.com