-=> Quoting Jack Sargeant to All <=-
 JS> From: Steven Kaeser 
. . .
 HP> From: Henny van der Pluijm 
. . .
 HP> A fifty year old case. An experienced pilot, Kenneth
 HP> Arnold, saw a train objects that flew extremely fast
 HP> from his private aircraft. They didn't look like aircraft,
   False. In fact, Arnold's initial conclusion was that they were some new 
kind of winged aircraft.
 HP> Nobody had after heard of flying saucers or UFOs or
 HP> whatever. Arnold just reports his observation.
 SK> Actually, there are many reports of UFOs prior to Arnold's
 SK> sighting
   In addition, Arnold's UFOs were nothing like "flying saucers" in the sense 
that the term is used today.
   And "flying saucers" were being described at least as far back as 1945, 
when Ray Palmer's _Amazing Stories_ magazine was warning people about the 
evil four-foot-high decendants of the the aliens who came in flying saucers 
150,000 years earlier.
 SK> Of course both sides are making assumptions with the proposals
 SK> they are advocating (or suggesting) and since part of the
 SK> evidence is somewhat annecdotal there is no way to confirm it one
 SK> way or the other. I would tend to trust Arnold's initial
 SK> impression,
   that they were aircraft, and not particularly unusual,
 SK> and wouldn't accept the "geese" explanation without
 SK> more than a theory.
   I would tend to suggest that since part of the evidence is anecdotal and 
unconfirmable, it's not much use to any serious attempt to find out the truth 
about UFOs.
 HP> The debate goes on for weeks. People who have better
 HP> things to do waste their time on total absurdity.
 SK> Since we can't prove what the objects were, the only logical
 SK> conclusion that can be drawn is that they are UFOs.
   That's not a conclusion, it's a fact.
   If it's flying and you don't know what it is, it's an Unidentified Flying 
Object.
   If you can't prove what it was, it's best to leave it at that and not 
start speculating.
Paul
... Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  
--- Blue Wave/Max v2.30 [NR]
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