This week’s Blather is to be a cogno-intellectual compendium of sundry anomalous aerial tidings…
While discussing the merry topic of mystery humans falling from the sky, last week’s Blather mentioned the death of a woman in Miami, Florida, who was suspected of having fallen from an aircraft. A matter of hours after my sending out Blather, she had been named as Helene Deborah Gusik, and the police now reckoned that she had fallen from a nearby apartment block, but didn’t know why she was in the building… (The Associated Press)
Regarding body temperatures of freefallers and stowaways on aircraft, Daniel Ko, in Blather’s Hong Kong office, tells us that:
‘I used to do a fair bit of skydiving (60 jumps) and even 13,500ft jumps from an open doored Cessna during v early spring through hailclouds (Brrrrrrr.) It’s unlikely that the victim’s body core temperature would drop significantly. Indeed, it’s significantly more likely that a low flying light a/c was involved, as (1) they’re easier to fall out of. (2) security makes it difficult to stow away in the external recesses of commercial pressurized airliners. (3) Bodies in freefall accelerate slowly. The first 1000ft takes 10s and 5s thereafter. Given the height of lowrise apartments the purported extent of the damage is not entirely consistent. (Guesstimate; experiment impractical)’
On Sunday 7th December, to go along with our report on a large quantity of parachute related deaths in a short space of time, three skydivers, two Americans and an Austrian, were killed attempting to sky dive at the South Pole. They were jumping from a Twin Otter at 8,500 feet, and two of the parachutes failed to open, the other only partially opening… Blather would like to make it clear that it was not responsible for any of this peculiar chain of accidents…
According to the Electronic Telegraph, an Indonesian sorcerer is facing trial for ‘allegedly murdering 42 women who sought his magic to make their husbands faithful’. Apparently Nasib Kelewang’s father told him – in a dream – to ‘kill 70 women to boost his powers’. In an incredible feat of intelligence, the unfortunate ladies were strangled and buried with their heads pointing to Nasib’s home. With flagging like that, why did it take 42 murders for the police to realise who was doing it? The mind boggles!
MORE ON THE BLEEDIN’ IRISH UFOS
As Mark Pilkington of Magonia magazine puts it ‘the circle is complete!’. It would appear that the Irish Centre for UFO Studies (ICUFOS) are in bed with Stephen Greer of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence , ‘the only worldwide organization dedicated to establishing peaceful and sustainable relations with extraterrestrial life forms’. If they’re not in bed with CSETI, then they’re at least in an adjoining bedroom. Roy Dutton, the man who is attributed with the ‘astronautical theory’ implemented by The ICUFOS, was seen on the TV programme ‘Sightings’ this week, working on predictions for Greer. I have to admit, we here in the Blather Orbiting Space Stasúin are not exactly huge fans of Greer’s. And wasn’t it only this week I was reading bOING bOING #15 which contains a thoroughly enjoyable piece by John Shirley called ‘The Sceptical Believer’. To quote:
‘Despite his lisp, Greer is a charismatic, powerfully articulate man, probably one of the best public speakers I’ve ever heard. And I can say definitely say that he’s probably the best damn liar I ever heard and this possibly makes him, despite his politically correct trappings, the most dangerous of all UFO cult leaders.’
Aside from this, the ICUFOS are limbering up for their big skywatch this weekend, in Bantry, Boyle and Bull Island. The incredibly irritating Chris Barry will talking to them by phone, and RTE are sending people to Bull Island. Blather shall be sending a delegation, and comments will be passed in this regard during the course of next weeks’s issue. To recap, the ICUFOS have ‘predicted’ a major UFO for Sunday the 14th of December. They haven’t mentioned that Saturday is the peak of the Geminid meteor showers, or that the spacestation Mir is easily visible this week. What they they *are* doing is setting up teams in all three ‘hotspots’ and trying to bring in the UFOs using ‘remote viewing’…
BOOM BOOM
The Local Wexford discussion board, on the Local Ireland site has been alight with discussion of anomalous ‘booms’ in the Wexford area’. Alan Maguire or Kerry Gray would like to know if anyone ‘has anybody come up with the solution to the strange noise that can be heard most nights over Wexford County. It can be heard sometime between 8pm and 11pm. Could this be an American spy-plane going over to the gulf, or have you any other ideas as to what it could be ?’
This Blatherskite being one of the Boys of Wexford, and having continuously heard this sound whilst residing in that pleasant county, a little investigation has begun. This morning I spoke to the Watch Manager in Air Traffic Control at Shannon Airport, who told me that the only regular supersonic civil aircraft that comes anywhere near Wexford is, of course, the Concorde, which passes some 60-70 miles (40-50 km) off the southern coast of Ireland. This would seem to explain the mystery, except that the Concorde is still at subsonic speed at this point in its journey… so far, the mystery remains, but we shall look into it further… (thanks to Ma Local Éire)
