The greatest supporter or South African supporters hasn't been very supportive of late. In fact South Africa's leading cellular provider appears to have lost the plot, and now, so have I.
Just more than a week ago I defaulted on a debit payment, entirely my mistake, but an innocent mistake. I really didn't expect my phone bill to be over R1500, but I get so many Please Call Me's that attempts to cut down on this obscene amount have so far failed.
Two Reasons
So the reason why the debit order defaulted was twofold: I underestimated how much I love my girlfriend, and I'm in the habit of wiring most of the target account's money to put out fires in other accounts, including AX credit cards.
So when I received the first ominous SMS's from Vodacom, I thought they would provide the same solution that Mutual and Federal offered me once upon a time. They give you a two week period of grace, and then pull off the original, outstanding amount in a second debit attempt. Makes sense eh?
So I call the number on my cellphone and have a long chat to the gentlemen, who says yes, it's fine if I agree for this month's account to go off with the next month's. Great. Great service. Thanks.
Service Suspended
Two days after this call my service is suspended, meaning I cannot make calls, send sms or anything else. This means I can't even call Vodacom from my phone is ask: "WTF?"
This is probably less than a week since my original default. And KOO KOO, this is also the first default in the history of my 16 month contract. Jeepers man!
The next day the real nightmare begins. I call a number, and then am quickly told to dial another number. This is a call centre; and once upon a time I worked at call centres. This is called passing the buck. Each person jumps into my nightmare, because the water is warm.
Escalation
Initially, pretending I'm chilling in the jacuzzi with my peeps, I patiently retell the same story and then I am told I'm in the wrong department, can I call back to another number. Then I start getting contradictory messages. I mean c'mon, who wants to be doing THAT in your jacuzzi?
After spending another R1500 (not on a weekend in Dullstroom)on holding and communicating fruitlessly to unsure, rude and abrupt call centre people, I finally ask the fifth person - who says I should go to a Vodashop to sort this out - if I can speak to her supervisor. I ask not to be put on hold and am then disconnected. It's time for a very short, very intense, very cleansing, cry.
Over the weekend, I take a nice relaxing drive to a Vodashop. This is a wonderful venue to unwind after working all week. The fellow in the shop helpfully provides me with a list of numbers to call.
Couldn't Care Less
It's interesting isn't it? You suspend someone's service, then design a maze filled with a plethora of uninformed people. When you suggest cancelling your contract altogether, they smugly say: "That's something we can arrange for you." Thank you!
It's difficult to match the image of 'leading cellular network' and 'greatest supporter of South African supporters' with person after person who seems to lack basic knowledge of their own product, and worse, really can't seem to care any less than they do. KOH KWAH!
A General Malaise in the Service Sector?
Is it Vodacom's fault or is this the sort of promising service we can expect from South Africans working for service providers?
A chap from Virgin Active called at the end of October, and I arranged with him to email me. He must be dead; he never did. Having returned fairly recently to South Africa, I've applied for a tax number from SARS. Assurance that this would be sent to me. Another tax person murdered?
Alexander Forbes: I handed personal documents including ID number, bank statements and the rest to a deaf young man who promotes a Medical Health scheme at my company, asking him to hand deliver these. Why? Identity theft has struck a colleague in our office in the last month. I didn't want the same risk, so I asked for this precaution.
One day later I received a call: 'We've been faxed a whole bunch of documents that are lying here. Do they belong to you?' THANK YOU!
A company that owes me R8000 has been in default for 18 months, yet my attorneys say they cannot be forced to pay me because the assets of the company are in the name of another, so effectively the Trust I'm suing is a 'Straw Man'. WONDERFUL!
When you add all of this up it starts to make one feel a little bit sick. I begin to feel agrophobia...a fear of walking out the door in the morning. Which person is going to promise me something then disappear in mysterious circumstances?
Why?
Why indeed? Is it just bad luck, bad karma? God maybe putting his foot down?I think the answer is that many 'useless people' are in jobs everywhere, and I think the reason they are useless is they see a phone call, or an instruction, as an irritation. So you could say:
"You complete me," or: "You irritate me."
Making My Day, Punk
Day to day, the mob go to work disconnected and unhappy. They don't understand work ethic, they're not pursuing personal goals (just someone elses)they have no goals of their own, but they're motivated by immediate gratification.
They'll tell you they'd rather be doing something else (they're not sure what, but they can be relied on doing the next thing just as badly).
These desk slouchers and corridor layabouts are all about time wasting, and finishing work early so as to watch Idols and chow something at McDonalds.
The world isn't real to them, it's just a sort of robotic dance through the week, junk food and movies on weekends. Then there's the moAning and whining afterwards, and the blame game. YOU WIN!
The useless lot who live these lives of quiet purposelessness, who become increasingly lazy with the few details entrusted to them, who see their jobs as 'a waste of time' have no motivation to be involved enough so as to not waste other people's time. Why should they, they are wasting their own time working in jobs that have no meaning for them.
Soup of the Day
This Lose/Lose mentality benefits no one, except, perhaps, Satan. What it does is extremely harmful. It inculcates a lack of trust in others, an overall lack of urgency, and worst of all, could lead to nuclear holocaust.
But entropy is the soup of the day, every day, and some languish in it, especially when it appears to be chicken soup (for the soul!).
People in general and South Africans in particular need to learn to be able to trust one another, in the streets ("Hi, I'll be your hijacker today")and when it comes do doing the job. But trust is earned, and I suppose it starts with being trustworthy oneself. Put that down.
It's too bad. I don't see that happening. But on the bright side, my cellphone bill for November ought to be R300 or less. Thanks Vodacom, you rock!
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Larry King UFO Debate (CNN)
Do UFOs Exist?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roswell, '47. One picture showed three dead aliens laying side by side, apparently on some kind of a canvas or cloth.(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Tonight: What really happened at Roswell, New Mexico, 56 years ago this week? Did the United States military cover up a UFO crash landing, complete with alien bodies? Do UFOs exist? Have they been here? Tonight we return to Roswell with those who were there. Walter Haut -- he was the information officer at Roswell Army Air Field. He wrote the now famous July 8, 1947, press release that said a flying disk had been recovered.
Glenn Dennis -- he worked at a Roswell funeral home and says someone claiming to be the airfield's mortuary officer called to ask him about small caskets. Nancy Easley (ph) Johnston -- her father was in charge of security and clean-up at the Roswell site. Jesse Marcel, Jr. -- his father was a Roswell intelligence officer.
He says he saw debris samples his father brought home from the crash site.And later, Don Schmitt, one of the world's leading UFO experts; Leslie Kean, a journalist investigating the incident known as "Pennsylvania's Roswell"; Dr. William Doleman, archeologist, who conducted tests on the Roswell site last year; and Julie Shuster (ph), Walter Haut's daughter and executive director of the International UFO Museum at Roswell. All next on LARRY KING LIVE.
By the way, we'll be seeing clips tonight and we refer you to the Sci-Fi Channel's documentary, "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence," that's now available on DVD, and we thank them for their help in this program tonight.
We start in Roswell, New Mexico with two guys who were there, Walter Haut, who was the United States Air Force public information officer at Roswell Army Air Field, and Glenn Dennis, who was working at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico.What call did you get, Glenn?
GLENN DENNIS, FUNERAL WORKER CALLED BY MILITARY RE '47 CRASH: I received a call from the mortuary officer, informing...
KING: Go ahead. I'm hearing someone else talking. Go ahead. Go ahead, Glenn. Continue. All right, I think that's Walter talking. I think we're trying to talk to Walter at the same time we're talking to Glenn. One at a time. Glenn, what call did you get?
DENNIS: I received a call from the mortuary officer at the base, asking me how many infant hermetically sealed caskets we had, three- and-a-half to four feet, in stock. And I told him -- I said...KING: What did you make of that?
DENNIS: ... we only had one. It's not military. But I said, I can call the Amarillo, Texas, coffin company by 3:00 this afternoon and have all you need by noon tomorrow (UNINTELLIGIBLE) I said, What's going on out there? And he said, That's not important. Then he calls me back later and he wants to know how embalming chemical would alter the tissues, the stomach contents, and what was our preparation (UNINTELLIGIBLE) bodies laying out in the elements for days. I said, Sir, we have to -- the mortuary officer has to tell us what he wants and how he wants it and what procedure he wants us to follow. And he became a little bit upset. But anyway, that was the way that it all started off with me right there.
KING: All right, Walter, what supposedly happened at the air base, where you were the public information officer?
WALTER HAUT, FIRST TO MAKE 1947 CRASH INCIDENT PUBLIC: We came up with the fact that we had in our possession a flying saucer, and Colonel Blanchard (ph) told me to put it out on every medium I can put it out on, which I did as best I could. And I went home that evening, and THAT telephone and everything that they can use was running completely on -- I don't know what kind of value, but I think it ultimately quit at about 3:00 o'clock in the morning. It was...
KING: Now, did...
HAUT: ... a long -- go ahead.
KING: Were you ever asked to countermand that release? Were you ever asked to change what you were first asked to say?
HAUT: No, I was not told to change it. I put out the facts that we had in our possession, a flying saucer.
KING: Did you, Walter, ever see any of the wreckage?
HAUT: No, sir.
KING: What was said in the days subsequent? Was there a lot of talk about this? Did people at the airfield say they had seen any of these bodies or seen any of these creatures? Was it a wide amount of discussion at Roswell?
HAUT: No. I think you have to take in the idea that the people on the base were accustomed to keeping their mouths shut, if I may use that expression. The need just to talk about information doesn't fit (ph). People that were working on the base knew what was going on in the aircraft that they were working on. The persons like myself, the flymen, we were accustomed to taking off at certain times and turning around and keep on going.
KING: Well, we're going to -- before we continue questioning, we're going to show you a clip from the Sci-Fi Channel documentary, "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence." It's now available on DVD. And we'll come back with Walter and Glenn. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Outside of Roswell, southwest of Highway 285, William Woody (ph) and his father reported seeing a fiery object descending toward earth.
KEVIN D. RANDLE, PH.D., AUTHOR, "OPERATION ROSWELL": What's interesting about the Woody aspect of it is that he and his father the next day, or a day or two later, tried to go out to see if they could find where the thing fell and ran into the military cordon. So we've got an interesting little corroboration there that the military was interested in it, and they were turned back by the cordons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)KING: I know that Walter is a little under the weather, so I'll just have a question or two left for you, Walter, and let you get out and get some help. Did not the next day General Roger Ramey (ph) in Fort Worth say that the object was a weather balloon?
HAUT: Yes. That's what came out. The general just put in a -- it's -- You're wrong when you talk about it. It's just a weather balloon, and forget it. That's about...
(CROSSTALK)KING: The key question for you, Walter, is, what do you believe?
HAUT: Well, I believe, personally, that we had in our possession a flying saucer, and that's the whole sum -- the story, as far as I was concerned.
KING: So you believe aliens crashed and that -- and that crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, at the air base. Walter, I hope you feel better. I thank you for spending some time with us.Glenn Dennis will remain. Other guests will join us. Be well, Walter.We'll return with more on the incredible events of 56 years ago at Roswell, New Mexico, still one of the most talked-about events ever. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The strange wreckage that Brazel (ph) discovered spanned an area 300 yards wide by a mile long. That parcel of land, known to investigators as the debris field, is where some believe an extraterrestrial craft blew apart and fell to earth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)KING: Remaining with us is Glenn Dennis, who worked at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico. Joining us from Colorado Springs is Nancy Easley Johnston, the daughter of Edwin Easley (ph), the Army Air Corps officer in charge of security and clean-up at the Roswell site. And in Helena, Montana, is Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr., the son of Major Jesse Marcel, who was an intelligence officer at Roswell. He says he saw debris samples that his father brought home.Glenn, back to you. What was the follow-up? What was the eventual result? Did they ever order any of these caskets? Glenn?
DENNIS: Yes?
KING: Did they order -- did the Army Air Force ever order anything from the funeral home?
DENNIS: No, sir, they did not. They did not order anything.
KING: How do you know the Air Force was calling you?
DENNIS: Well, because I knew the mortuary officer out there very well. We were close friends.
KING: Oh.
DENNIS: And I knew all the people out there. We worked at the hospital. We had the only ambulance business, and we were involved quite a bit out at the base. Also, we had a military contract. So I knew them all.
KING: Do you agree with Walter? Do you think that a -- that a foreign object landed there with aliens at Roswell 56 years ago?
HAUT: Well, I agree with him. One reason I agree with him, because all the ranchers and farmers knew what weather balloons were. And every time they found one, there's a little instrument on the end. And if they turned that in, they got 25 bucks. When this happened, they had no idea what it was. They filled their pick-ups full of metal -- I mean, full of the debris, brought it in to the Roswell Army Air Field. And that's where all the investigation started, right there.
KING: All right, Nancy, your father was Army Air Corps officer in charge of security and clean-up. What did he -- how old were you at the time?
NANCY JOHNSTON, DAD HEADED ROSWELL CRASH SITE SECURITY: I was a year-and-a-half old, so I remember very little!(LAUGHTER)
KING: What did he tell you later on?
JOHNSTON: My father was reluctant to ever talk about this incident. Once my sister and I discovered that an incident had occurred that he had been part of, when we asked him about it, he always told us that he had promised President Truman that he would not discuss it. And he stuck with that up until the end -- until almost the very end.
KING: Doesn't by the fact that he wouldn't say anything tell you that something happened?JOHNSTON: I'm sure something happened. I am not privy to the knowledge of what exactly happened, but I'm sure something happened.
KING: And Jesse Marcel, Jr., your father was an intelligence officer. You said you saw debris samples that he brought home? What did you see?
DR. JESSE MARCEL, JR., DAD SHOWED HIM CRASH SITE DEBRIS: Yes, Larry. You know, my dad was the -- one of the intelligence officers for the 509th Bomb Group. And as such, it was his job to investigate unusual events like what happened out there. And he was called out one night to the ranch where this thing had landed, picked up some of the debris. He and one of the CIC (ph) agents picked up some of the debris and loaded it in the back of our 1942 Buick.
And since our house was on the way to the air base, my dad just swung by the house to show my mother and myself what they had found out there because he realized this was something very, very unusual, something unique, as a matter of fact, because he didn't think we would ever see anything like this again, which, of course, I have not.And he drove by the house, put it on kitchen floor, woke my mother and myself us up so we could look at this. And we got out in the kitchen and looked -- I looked at the debris that was on the floor, and there was just a lot of metal parts, metallic, like, foil- like debris, some I-beam material and some black plastic material. And the first thing he wanted us to do was to look for electronic components, such as vacuum tubes, resistors or condensers because I think he said something like this is part of a flying saucer. And being a young kid at the time, I didn't know what a flying saucer was, but I sure realized later.But I examined some of the debris, some of the foil. I didn't -- picked it up, looked at it. Didn't try to bend or tear it or stress it in any way. But I found something very unusual. There were some I-beams that were about a foot, a foot-and-a-half long.
And along the inner surface of the I-beams, you could see some sort of writing. And there was kind of a purple metallic hue, as you could see very well if you held this up to the light. And I thought at first this was like Egyptian hieroglyphics, but later thought it was not hieroglyphics at all but more like geometric symbols.KING: I want to pick up there in a minute, but I want to -- hold on one second, Jesse. I want to toss to film clip of your father talking a little about this. Let's watch.(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JESSE MARCEL, SR., 509TH BOMB GROUP: One thing I was certain of, being familiar with all air activities, that it was not a weather balloon nor an aircraft nor a missile. It was something else, of which -- we didn't know what it was. There were just fragments strewn all over the area. So we proceeded to pick up the parts. A lot of it had a lot of little numbers with symbols that -- to me, I call them hieroglyphics because I could not interpret them. They could not be read. They were just like symbols of something that meant something. These little numbers could not be broken, could not be burned. I even tried to burn that, would not burn. See, that stuff weighs nothing. It's not any thicker than tinfoil in a pack of cigarettes.(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Jesse, subsequently, did your father come home and tell you and your mother to forget everything?
MARCEL: Well, he sure did. As I understood, he flew the material to Fort Worth to General Roger Ramey, who was 8th Air Force commander, for his information. And when my dad got back the next day or the day after, he sat my mother and myself down and told us under no uncertain terms were we to ever discuss this issue again. Of course, here I'm talking about, but -- but that was very definitely one of the commands that he gave us, is not to talk about it, not with your friends, not with anybody, not even family members.
KING: So the obvious, Jesse, is what do you believe?
MARCEL: Well, I think it's something very extraordinary. I don't know what it was. But since that time, I -- and thinking more about this, I can't help but believe that it was something that came from another civilization, much like a space probe that we're sending to other planets right now and -- because the material was unique, like I say. And I do know it was not a weather balloon or even a mogul (ph) balloon, like the Air Force later said, because the material was totally different.
KING: Nancy, what do you -- I know your father said, Say nothing, and he wouldn't tell you what, and Truman and all that. What do you believe?
JOHNSTON: I believe that something obviously happened out there in the countryside close to Roswell that the government has tried very hard all these years to keep us from understanding and knowing about. Since I was not a witness, I have no personal knowledge of what it was, but it had to have been something very big at that time that the government wanted covered up.
KING: Now, Glenn, you still live -- you live in Roswell. Do you believe there's...
DENNIS: That's true...
(CROSSTALK)KING: Do you believe there's still stuff there?
DENNIS: Well, they go out every year, every year after all of the snows and the winter. These government people go out with Geiger counters and everything else, and they have this all marked off up there. And I don't know if they found anything else or not because they do not consult us anymore at all. But I do know the ranchers and I know people up there because our mortuary has been involved up there with most of it -- I mean, with the people there, and very seldom will we ever talk about it. Once in a while, we'll sit down and mention something, but not very often.
KING: Jesse, you think the government set your father up to be kind of a fall guy here?
MARCEL: Well, he was a good soldier. He was just following orders. And I'm sure that he was told to bring the message home to the family that -- that not to talk about it because, apparently, somebody found out that we actually saw the material. And you know, years later, I asked him about the possibility of something being still out there, and he said, No, no, no. They vacuumed that place up, period.
KING: Now, you stay with us, Jesse. Nancy, thanks very much for being with us. We'll hold Glenn, and we'll be -- thank you, Nancy. We appreciate your input. We'll come back with more. We'll meet our full panel later. Don't go away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 1947, Americans found their skies filled with all sorts of strange flying objects.UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The UFO phenomenon really took off, actually, in June of 1947 in the state of Washington when a pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold saw many objects going in formation at a very, very high speed by Mount Rainier in Washington.UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Arnold said that nine silvery objects he'd seen looked like saucers skipping over a pond. The next day, his story was front-page news, and a new term entered the American lexicon: flying saucer.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP - JUNE, 1997)
COL. JOHN HAYNES, U.S. AIR FORCE: Over that period of time, dummies were dropped all around there, and I think it's logical to assume that the people there saw Air Force ambulances come out, they saw gurneys come out, they saw body bags come out because the dummies were put into the body bags to protect them. They saw people in pith helmet, they saw people in shorts out there brushing the bushes, looking for the remnants of the balloons. And when you put all that stuff together and spin it, you find that it fits perfectly with many of the occurrences in Roswell during that era.(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Remaining with us is Glenn Dennis, who worked at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico, 56 year ago. Staying with us in Helena, Montana, is Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr., the son of Major Jesse Marcel. Joining us now from Roswell is Donald Schmitt. Donald Schmitt is the former co-director of J. Alan (ph) Hynek Center for UFO Studies. He's the author of dozens of articles about UFOs, two best- selling books about Roswell. In San Francisco is Leslie Kean. Leslie's an investigative journalist, director of investigation of the Coalition for Freedom of Information. She's looking into connections of the 1965 incident in Kecksburg (ph), Pennsylvania's. It's been called "Pennsylvania's Roswell."
She's not an expert on Roswell. We'll go to her in a little while. Dr. William Doleman is an archaeologist, principal investigator for the University of New Mexico's School of Contract Archaeology. And he conducted a Sci-Fi Channel-sponsored archaeological dig at the purported UFO crash site in Roswell in September of 2002.Donald, what is your read on all of this?
DONALD SCHMITT, FORMER CO-DIR. HYNEK CTR. FOR UFO STUDIES: Well, I think what has impressed me most of all, especially within the recent years, pertaining to the investigation, as even Nancy Strickland (ph) was describing, the level of extreme pressure for these people who were involved to retain their silence, to keep this event, keep the experience with them for as long as they did, withholding the information even from their loved ones, their wives, their children. And as you all know that a deathbed testimony is admissible in a court of law as physical evidence, and sadly, that's something that we are concentrating on right now. And to date, not a single one of these people on their deathbeds are describing any type of weather balloon, rocket, aircraft, anything conventional. Invariably, they all describe the bodies recovered, as well. And I'm not talking about anthropomorphic wooden crash dummies.
KING: Dr. Doleman, what do you believe?
WILLIAM DOLEMAN, PH.D., LED 2002 ROSWELL ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG: I believe that, clearly, something happened or it wouldn't have made the news. At the same time, I kind of maintain a position in which I'm a scientific investigator looking for physical evidence, and I'm not in the business of evaluating the testimony of various people. Instead, I'm engaged in a project that, as far as I know, represents the first intensive effort at what -- at least -- to find some kind of physical evidence of whatever happened back there in 1947. And so in terms of what I believe, it's really kind of irrelevant because what I believe is that scientific investigation is the best way to go about looking for that physical evidence.
KING: Jesse, why do you believe, if it occurred, the Army wanted to cover it up? What's the big deal? Why not tell us there is life somewhere else?
MARCEL: I wish I knew the answer to that question because, for some reason, they are not ready for the public to know what's really out there, in spite of the fact that we're sending probes ourselves to other planets. And obviously, there are civilizations out there that are far advanced of us and can send probes here. So I really don't know the answer to the questions, why they're trying to keep it a secret.KING: Leslie, what happened at Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965?
LESLIE KEAN, JOURNALIST INVESTIGATING "PA'S ROSWELL": Well, something came down in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965. An object was seen in the sky. There was a meteorite that night, and it went through a number of different states. Citizens of the community saw -- some of them saw it actually make a few turns. It came in fairly slowly and landed in the woods near Kecksburg. A number of witnesses actually saw the object on the ground. Others saw a very extensive military presence come into the region. They cordoned off the area. They kept people away and eventually carted away something on the back of a flatbed truck.This is what the people of the area tell us. The Air Force has told us that nothing came down that night. So we have a contradiction here, and I'm interested in trying to access information that will solve that mystery.
KING: What do you believe?
KEAN: I don't know what it was. There's no way to know. We know that something came down. It could have been a Russian probe. We don't know what it was, and I'm not in a position to formulate an opinion. I just want -- I believe that the people have the right to the information, the people of Pennsylvania, in particular, who have really suffered a lot by having that information denied to them. And I just think people have a right to know. It was, you know, 1965. Why not tell people what happened there?
KING: We're going to take a break. Jesse Marcel, thanks very much for joining us.When we come back, our panel will remain, and we'll also meet Julie Schuster, the executive director of the International UFO Museum. We'll also be including your phone calls. We're discussing Roswell, New Mexico, 56 years ago.Charles Gibson of "Good Morning America" is tomorrow night's special guest. Don't go away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And so Ramey told the press that all this stuff was, was simply a weather balloon. And that was what most of the press published the next day.
SCHMITT: They never saw the real material. The real material went on to Washington at that time. So Marcel is ordered to pose with the substituted radar reflector balloon. So the first press release, there was a flying saucer, and six hours later, We're sorry, ladies and gentlemen. It's just a weather balloon. The question is, which press release is the true story?
(END VIDEO CLIP)(COMMERCIAL BREAK)(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Major Marcel (ph) and Captain Sheridan Cavet (ph) traveled to the Foster Ranch and spent a day gathering the strange wreckage. Marcel was so intrigued by the debris that on his way back to the base, he stopped by his home to show his family what he'd found. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My dad came into my room, very excited and he wanted to show us some material that he'd found. I think he -- the inclination or the intimation there was this was part of a flying saucer. (END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Discussing the events in Roswell, New Mexico. Joining us now is Julie Shuster. She is the executive director of the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell. The earlier guest, Walter Haut, is her father. What is the -- what did we see at the museum, Julie?
JULIE SHUSTER, EXEC. DIR., INTL. UFO MUSEUM AT ROSWELL: We have a lot of things to offer and one of the things that we try to do is show what Roswell looked like in 1947, give our visitors a glimpse of what Roswell looked like and one of the things we do is our radio display with the teletype and the audio control that show what the radio station may have looked like where Mac Brazel was interviewed.
KING: Do you show anything resembling what might have been captured there?
SHUSTER: We have a lot of artists' renditions of what the saucers may have looked like. We do have a few other displays that give some interpretations.
KING: We know what your father thinks. What do you think?
SHUSTER: Now if I said I agreed with my father, because he's sitting here -- no -- I believe that something did happen. These were people with incredible integrity and very conservative and if they said something happened, something happened.
KING: Donald Schmitt, why would the government -- this has been asked over the years, every time we hear about UFOs, what are they hiding? For what purpose?
SCHMITT: Well, in just looking at the history, specifically of New Mexico in 1947, I'm amazed when I especially lecture on the college circuit when you ask where was first atomic bomb detonated and invariably most people say Japan, whereas anybody here in New Mexico, historically knows it happened right here, just about 150 miles west of Roswell. Roswell was the hot bed of all military research and testing at that time, the captured V-2 rockets and if we go by the Air Force's Project Blue Book records, which would suggest that there were more UFO sightings here in 1947 than anywhere else, whereas there were also more Soviet spies here...
KING: But the question is, why would they keep the information from the public, assuming it's all true?
SCHMITT: Well, that would be part of it, the fact that it immediately became a concern of the high ranking officials at the Pentagon that if this was of anything of a foreign design and it was some new intelligence, something that could potentially be reverse engineered, replicated, that it would become an immediate race with the Soviets, something that we possessed and hopefully they did not.
KING: And that wouldn't be the thinking now. So we assume that this information is passed along, so why doesn't -- Rumsfeld release it?
SCHMITT: Well, as you have had former President Carter and former President Clinton, the question could be posed to either one of them, whereas they themselves tried to gain access to information, actually tried to release information specifically on UFOs and specifically on Roswell and yet they failed. It is our position -- my partner Thomas Carey and I -- that it is still a cover up of ignorance, that they have physical proof, but they still don't have the answers as to from where, from why and from whom.
KING: Glenn, why do you think they are not releasing it?
DENNIS: Well, from what I've been told, and being interviewed, the problem is that whoever has this energy could control the whole world and if we don't have the elements on our planet or anything else to reproduce these, then it could be a problem. I've heard this from three or four different sources and maybe that's true. I don't know. If you remember, the Orson Welles deal. KING: "War of the Worlds."
DENNIS: Yes.
KING: Yes.
DENNIS: And they didn't know if that would happen in New Mexico or around the world, or anything else if we were being invaded by aliens.
KING: Before we go to calls, Dr. Doleman, what do we know, know. What can you definitively scientifically say?
DOLEMAN: Well, we were funded by the Sci-Fi Channel back in September of last year to conduct an archaeological test excavation at the putative Roswell impact site, which is one of two or three sites. We were led to that location by Don Schmitt and what we did was implement some fairly standard archaeology test excavations methods in a staged research project to look for evidence of the sort that had been originally reported by the eyewitnesses and that primarily includes debris, which was ostensibly all cleaned up, and a gouge or furrow mark in the ground that was made by something that hit the ground and then skipped back up in the air and came back down in another locations. So the methods that we used to look for that involved geophysical prospection using electromagnetic conductivity and metal detection.
KING: I -- I don't want to get into too much technical stuff.
DOLEMAN: Yes, I'm trying to keep it..
KING: What we know?
DOLEMAN: What we know is that during the process of that investigation, we recovered some things that will be analyzed. We have soil samples in which we'll look for evidence of unusual chemical composition using fairly standard geological techniques, under the assumption vacuumed or not, if there was debris, a lot of it was small, just like a broken glass and not all of it was recovered and some of it must be in the dirt out there if there is debris. We also know that we found in one of the back hoe trenches that we excavated an unusual feature that had essentially the shape that you'd expect if there was a gouge and trench and the backhoe trench where that thing was found was right where there was supposed to be a gouge. And so, essentially we're still in the analytical stage and the results of the analysis are going to be, I think I made available in a show presented by Sci-Fi coming up in October.
KING: Let me get a call here. Reykkavik, Iceland, hello.
CALLER: Hello.
KING: Hi.
CALLER: How have you, Larry?
KING: Fine. What's the question?
CALLER: Don't you think stories about the aliens being small people with large heads and large eyes and small mouths just came out of the experiments the military were doing after the war? They used children's bodies to investigate the effects of radiation on the human body.
KING: Any truth to that, Donald?
SCHMITT: The Air Force, in its continuing effort to provide alternative explanations and theories became -- reached a ridiculous level in 199, on the 50th anniversary, when it was suggested that these were anthropomorphic wooden crash dummies, albeit five years removed from 1947, with the suggestion that the witnesses were merely time compressing the decades within their memories. And until they are able to provide a single witness contrary to our own, as evidenced by Jessie Marcel's father and others that we have interviewed and have signed sworn affidavits -- until they can provide a witness at the debris field, at the impact site, at the base, on any of the outgoing and incoming flights involved, suggesting this was an alternative explanation, something prosaic, we will continue to go where the witnesses and the testimony lead us.
KING: Let me get a break. As we go to break, we remind you that the clips you are seeing are from Sci-Fi Channel's documentary "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence." It's now available on DVD, and there you see the cover of the DVD.And we'll be back with more calls. Don't go away.(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COL. JOHN HAYNES U.S. AIR FORCE: They are talking about 1947. You're talking about dummies used in the '50s, almost a decade later. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm afraid that's a problem that we have with time compression. I don't know what they saw in '47 but I'm quite sure it probably was project Mogul. I think if you find that people talk about things over a period of time, they begin to lose exactly when the date was and there were lots of dummies dropped. There were 2,500 balloons launched during this 30-year period in New Mexico alone.(COMMERCIAL BREAK)(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's the matter, James? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: More of them are coming. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you mean? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Different ones. Like him. Many different races. Different species. They're coming! UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you okay? (END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Julie Shuster, do a lot of people come to that museum?
SHUSTER: Yes, we have people from around the world coming. And last year we had over 205,000 visitors through our doors.
KING: What's that to your right?
SHUSTER: This is Harold our anthropomorphic, he is one of the explanations that was give that we mistook or the people of Roswell in 1947 mistook as an alien. The only problem was he wasn't used until 1952 to the late 1960s. So, we don't think he looks like an alien.
KING: Do most the people come, are they come as believers?
SHUSTER: I think a lot of them do. I can't say most. We have people that come with believe, don't believe, or never going to believe. But a lot of people come and want to have questions answered, if possible.
KING: Leslie Kean, what was found in Kecksburg?
KEAN: Well, Larry, that what is we want to find out, because we don't know.
KING: You mean, they won't show you?
KEAN: That is why we're doing the freedom of information act initiative. We have a law firm working with us and we got a history -- archives research firm. We have got a private investigator. We got a team of people trying to get the documentation that will tell us what came down. And that's why we are working on it. We don't know.
KING: Hamilton, New Jersey, hello.
CALLER: Hi. I have a question for Glenn.
KING: Go ahead.
CALLER: Did you see what the military put in the coffin that was (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
KING: Did you ever see anything in a coffin, Glenn?
DENNIS: No, I did not. I did not see it. They were all shipped out in what we call body bags and put in a hermetically sealed container and was flown directly to Wright-Patterson.
KING: Tampa, Florida. Hello.
CALLER: Yes, my question for your panel is, what effect, if any did the Cold War between United States and Russia have on disclosure of information on possible UFO crashes such as the one in Roswell in 1947.
KING: Don Schmitt has already referred to that. You think a great effect, right Don?
SCHMITT: Yes, of course it did. Almost a predecessor to our race to the moon, for example. And our development of atomic propulsion. The soviets won't detonate their first atomic bomb until August 1949 but our concern certainly was as to development of such technology and in the event of such a crash here at Roswell, again, certainly the hope that we were the only ones in possession. And we also believe that it may have also become a bit of a bargaining tool. The suggestion it was merely a weather balloon was something that even Premier Joseph Stalin didn't believe back in '47. And there are documents that suggest that he was very concerned that we had even upped our technology regarding the atomic bomb.
KING: Calgary, Ontario, Canada.
CALLER: Larry, a great fan.
KING: Thank you.
CALLER: It seems that the most frequent reports of UFO sightings are in the United States. You don't hear much about sightings in other countries throughout the world.
KING: Doctor Doleman, are there others?
DOLEMAN: Unfortunately, I'm totally not an expert in the UFO phenomenon. And I am an expert in archaeology, and finding physical evidence. But I'm afraid I can't answer that question. KING: Donald are there others?
SCHMITT: Yes. If I might, in fact, at the center for UFO studies, for example, as they cataloged reports from all over the world, we have reports from almost as many countries that presently are in the United Nations.
KING: Why would you guess, Don, they land in Roswell, they don't land in Washington? They land in Ennui, they don't land in Paris. Why not a large area where we could all see them? SCHMITT: That is always been the nature of the beast, so to speak. In other words, the phenomenon it is has been very late night, very rural, very isolated, yet there have been profound cases over military strategic air command facilities, in fact, even the buzzing of the White House in subsequent weeks in July of 1952 were formations of objects were tracked and aircraft scrambling from Andrews Air Force Base on these unknowns. So again, Roswell...
KING: Not just remote areas?
SCHMITT: New Mexico I think it had to do with the fact it was hot bed of military activity at the time. And indeed in dealing with something off the planet they were concerned with our military potential back in 1947.
KING: We'll be back with more moments and more phone calls on this ever-fascinating phenomenon. Don't go away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the front of the draw it said "Operation Blue Book." This might interest you in big (UNINTELLIGIBLE) photo. Roswell, '47. One picture showed three dead aliens laying side by side, apparently on some kind of a canvas or cloth, and showed two others standing side by side, I assume they were the ones that lived. BRYANT GUMBEL, HOST: According to Cox the file contained photos of the crashed spacecraft. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Saucer, as they call it. Was not round as it's been depicted in most cases. It was more egg-shaped, front to rear. (END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Julie, what does officialdom think of your museum?
SHUSTER: We've had no response, that I know, of from any official sources. We've opened up. We don't try to tell people one way or the other. So, nobody has questioned us, that we know of. KING: What's that over there to your left?
SHUSTER: This is a prop. This alien was created as a prop for the movie Roswell in 1994 and he is one of our most-photographed, most enjoyed exhibits. People really like to check him out, and see what the aliens might have looked like. KING: That's been the general description of those who reported to have seen them, that's the general description as to how they looked, right? SHUSTER: Yes, sir, it was a composite of witness accounts.
KING: Thanks Julie.Oakland, California, hello.
CALLER: Hi Larry. A quick comment. First, there has been UFO sightings of a major city such as Mexico City...
KING: They never land anywhere, though. They've been sighted everywhere, but they only land in Wallawallawalla.
CALLER: and possible sightings in Phoenix. My question is why are UFO investigations generally not taken seriously? Why are they laughed off as science fiction?
KING: Leslie.
KEAN: Well, she's right. There's a strong attitude of ridicule in the media and everywhere else. I think it's become a cultural phenomenon over many, many years. I think a lot of it is because people are not informed about the issue. If journalists and scientists and others were to study the data, to study what we do know, and to listen to some of the experts that have talked about the issue, I think they would change their minds.
But it has become sort of inculcated into our culture. So I encourage people to do some research into this phenomena and, I think, they will discover it worthy of investigation and worthy of news coverage and there are scientists in this country and around the world deserve resource to solve this problem for us. And we can have these wonderful witnesses coming forward. We can have documentaries made for years and years and years. We aren't going to solve the problem until we get our scientists on board. Get them the resources they need to find out for us, what these things are and to solve this problem once and for all. And I think that is what is needed. The Ridicule factor has to go.
KING: Hamburg, Germany. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Larry. You are just great. My question is, how could aliens visit the Earth if nothing can travel faster than the speed of light?
KING: And not what?
CALLER: Speed of light?
KING: How co-- Donald, do you get that question?
SCHMITT: How could they travel the great distances and Dr. Heinich (ph) used the analogy of a deck of playing cards and the thickness of a card equally the distance from the Earth to the Moon being a single card. And the distance from Alpha Centauri 4.3 light years being 19 miles of playing cards. So it truly is, as far as astronomers and astrophysicists, for example -- that it is beyond acceptance within their field. But we still have to accept the possibilities of parallel universes, interdimensional travel, worm holes, black holes and that type of thing and even teleportation and possibly time travel.
KING: Glenn, do you think we'll ever going to know the whole story?
DENNIS: Well, not at the rate it's going now. There's some sightings just recently in Australia and New Zealand and also I have a call the other day that people that had been in Egypt visiting the pyramids and they shut them down for three or four days and no tourists going out there on a count of the sightings.
KING: Go ahead, Glenn.
DENNIS: I don't know. I think more of the public understands this, the more they know about it, the better the whole world will be.
KING: Dr. Doleman, do you think we're going to get answers?
DOLEMAN: Well, I -- hard to say if we will or not, but I think that Leslie made a very important point, and that's one of the things that interested me in this project I did out there, that is, that all of the Roswell story, up until this point is largely based on eyewitness testimony and anecdotal evidence a few suggestive documents and things like that. And there is actually until this point, no one has bothered to go out and look for actual physical evidence. My part in this whole thing was to apply archaeological techniques to what is essentially an archaeological problem. Go to a site and see if there is evidence.
From CNN.com
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roswell, '47. One picture showed three dead aliens laying side by side, apparently on some kind of a canvas or cloth.(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Tonight: What really happened at Roswell, New Mexico, 56 years ago this week? Did the United States military cover up a UFO crash landing, complete with alien bodies? Do UFOs exist? Have they been here? Tonight we return to Roswell with those who were there. Walter Haut -- he was the information officer at Roswell Army Air Field. He wrote the now famous July 8, 1947, press release that said a flying disk had been recovered.
Glenn Dennis -- he worked at a Roswell funeral home and says someone claiming to be the airfield's mortuary officer called to ask him about small caskets. Nancy Easley (ph) Johnston -- her father was in charge of security and clean-up at the Roswell site. Jesse Marcel, Jr. -- his father was a Roswell intelligence officer.
He says he saw debris samples his father brought home from the crash site.And later, Don Schmitt, one of the world's leading UFO experts; Leslie Kean, a journalist investigating the incident known as "Pennsylvania's Roswell"; Dr. William Doleman, archeologist, who conducted tests on the Roswell site last year; and Julie Shuster (ph), Walter Haut's daughter and executive director of the International UFO Museum at Roswell. All next on LARRY KING LIVE.
By the way, we'll be seeing clips tonight and we refer you to the Sci-Fi Channel's documentary, "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence," that's now available on DVD, and we thank them for their help in this program tonight.
We start in Roswell, New Mexico with two guys who were there, Walter Haut, who was the United States Air Force public information officer at Roswell Army Air Field, and Glenn Dennis, who was working at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico.What call did you get, Glenn?
GLENN DENNIS, FUNERAL WORKER CALLED BY MILITARY RE '47 CRASH: I received a call from the mortuary officer, informing...
KING: Go ahead. I'm hearing someone else talking. Go ahead. Go ahead, Glenn. Continue. All right, I think that's Walter talking. I think we're trying to talk to Walter at the same time we're talking to Glenn. One at a time. Glenn, what call did you get?
DENNIS: I received a call from the mortuary officer at the base, asking me how many infant hermetically sealed caskets we had, three- and-a-half to four feet, in stock. And I told him -- I said...KING: What did you make of that?
DENNIS: ... we only had one. It's not military. But I said, I can call the Amarillo, Texas, coffin company by 3:00 this afternoon and have all you need by noon tomorrow (UNINTELLIGIBLE) I said, What's going on out there? And he said, That's not important. Then he calls me back later and he wants to know how embalming chemical would alter the tissues, the stomach contents, and what was our preparation (UNINTELLIGIBLE) bodies laying out in the elements for days. I said, Sir, we have to -- the mortuary officer has to tell us what he wants and how he wants it and what procedure he wants us to follow. And he became a little bit upset. But anyway, that was the way that it all started off with me right there.
KING: All right, Walter, what supposedly happened at the air base, where you were the public information officer?
WALTER HAUT, FIRST TO MAKE 1947 CRASH INCIDENT PUBLIC: We came up with the fact that we had in our possession a flying saucer, and Colonel Blanchard (ph) told me to put it out on every medium I can put it out on, which I did as best I could. And I went home that evening, and THAT telephone and everything that they can use was running completely on -- I don't know what kind of value, but I think it ultimately quit at about 3:00 o'clock in the morning. It was...
KING: Now, did...
HAUT: ... a long -- go ahead.
KING: Were you ever asked to countermand that release? Were you ever asked to change what you were first asked to say?
HAUT: No, I was not told to change it. I put out the facts that we had in our possession, a flying saucer.
KING: Did you, Walter, ever see any of the wreckage?
HAUT: No, sir.
KING: What was said in the days subsequent? Was there a lot of talk about this? Did people at the airfield say they had seen any of these bodies or seen any of these creatures? Was it a wide amount of discussion at Roswell?
HAUT: No. I think you have to take in the idea that the people on the base were accustomed to keeping their mouths shut, if I may use that expression. The need just to talk about information doesn't fit (ph). People that were working on the base knew what was going on in the aircraft that they were working on. The persons like myself, the flymen, we were accustomed to taking off at certain times and turning around and keep on going.
KING: Well, we're going to -- before we continue questioning, we're going to show you a clip from the Sci-Fi Channel documentary, "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence." It's now available on DVD. And we'll come back with Walter and Glenn. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Outside of Roswell, southwest of Highway 285, William Woody (ph) and his father reported seeing a fiery object descending toward earth.
KEVIN D. RANDLE, PH.D., AUTHOR, "OPERATION ROSWELL": What's interesting about the Woody aspect of it is that he and his father the next day, or a day or two later, tried to go out to see if they could find where the thing fell and ran into the military cordon. So we've got an interesting little corroboration there that the military was interested in it, and they were turned back by the cordons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)KING: I know that Walter is a little under the weather, so I'll just have a question or two left for you, Walter, and let you get out and get some help. Did not the next day General Roger Ramey (ph) in Fort Worth say that the object was a weather balloon?
HAUT: Yes. That's what came out. The general just put in a -- it's -- You're wrong when you talk about it. It's just a weather balloon, and forget it. That's about...
(CROSSTALK)KING: The key question for you, Walter, is, what do you believe?
HAUT: Well, I believe, personally, that we had in our possession a flying saucer, and that's the whole sum -- the story, as far as I was concerned.
KING: So you believe aliens crashed and that -- and that crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, at the air base. Walter, I hope you feel better. I thank you for spending some time with us.Glenn Dennis will remain. Other guests will join us. Be well, Walter.We'll return with more on the incredible events of 56 years ago at Roswell, New Mexico, still one of the most talked-about events ever. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The strange wreckage that Brazel (ph) discovered spanned an area 300 yards wide by a mile long. That parcel of land, known to investigators as the debris field, is where some believe an extraterrestrial craft blew apart and fell to earth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)KING: Remaining with us is Glenn Dennis, who worked at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico. Joining us from Colorado Springs is Nancy Easley Johnston, the daughter of Edwin Easley (ph), the Army Air Corps officer in charge of security and clean-up at the Roswell site. And in Helena, Montana, is Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr., the son of Major Jesse Marcel, who was an intelligence officer at Roswell. He says he saw debris samples that his father brought home.Glenn, back to you. What was the follow-up? What was the eventual result? Did they ever order any of these caskets? Glenn?
DENNIS: Yes?
KING: Did they order -- did the Army Air Force ever order anything from the funeral home?
DENNIS: No, sir, they did not. They did not order anything.
KING: How do you know the Air Force was calling you?
DENNIS: Well, because I knew the mortuary officer out there very well. We were close friends.
KING: Oh.
DENNIS: And I knew all the people out there. We worked at the hospital. We had the only ambulance business, and we were involved quite a bit out at the base. Also, we had a military contract. So I knew them all.
KING: Do you agree with Walter? Do you think that a -- that a foreign object landed there with aliens at Roswell 56 years ago?
HAUT: Well, I agree with him. One reason I agree with him, because all the ranchers and farmers knew what weather balloons were. And every time they found one, there's a little instrument on the end. And if they turned that in, they got 25 bucks. When this happened, they had no idea what it was. They filled their pick-ups full of metal -- I mean, full of the debris, brought it in to the Roswell Army Air Field. And that's where all the investigation started, right there.
KING: All right, Nancy, your father was Army Air Corps officer in charge of security and clean-up. What did he -- how old were you at the time?
NANCY JOHNSTON, DAD HEADED ROSWELL CRASH SITE SECURITY: I was a year-and-a-half old, so I remember very little!(LAUGHTER)
KING: What did he tell you later on?
JOHNSTON: My father was reluctant to ever talk about this incident. Once my sister and I discovered that an incident had occurred that he had been part of, when we asked him about it, he always told us that he had promised President Truman that he would not discuss it. And he stuck with that up until the end -- until almost the very end.
KING: Doesn't by the fact that he wouldn't say anything tell you that something happened?JOHNSTON: I'm sure something happened. I am not privy to the knowledge of what exactly happened, but I'm sure something happened.
KING: And Jesse Marcel, Jr., your father was an intelligence officer. You said you saw debris samples that he brought home? What did you see?
DR. JESSE MARCEL, JR., DAD SHOWED HIM CRASH SITE DEBRIS: Yes, Larry. You know, my dad was the -- one of the intelligence officers for the 509th Bomb Group. And as such, it was his job to investigate unusual events like what happened out there. And he was called out one night to the ranch where this thing had landed, picked up some of the debris. He and one of the CIC (ph) agents picked up some of the debris and loaded it in the back of our 1942 Buick.
And since our house was on the way to the air base, my dad just swung by the house to show my mother and myself what they had found out there because he realized this was something very, very unusual, something unique, as a matter of fact, because he didn't think we would ever see anything like this again, which, of course, I have not.And he drove by the house, put it on kitchen floor, woke my mother and myself us up so we could look at this. And we got out in the kitchen and looked -- I looked at the debris that was on the floor, and there was just a lot of metal parts, metallic, like, foil- like debris, some I-beam material and some black plastic material. And the first thing he wanted us to do was to look for electronic components, such as vacuum tubes, resistors or condensers because I think he said something like this is part of a flying saucer. And being a young kid at the time, I didn't know what a flying saucer was, but I sure realized later.But I examined some of the debris, some of the foil. I didn't -- picked it up, looked at it. Didn't try to bend or tear it or stress it in any way. But I found something very unusual. There were some I-beams that were about a foot, a foot-and-a-half long.
And along the inner surface of the I-beams, you could see some sort of writing. And there was kind of a purple metallic hue, as you could see very well if you held this up to the light. And I thought at first this was like Egyptian hieroglyphics, but later thought it was not hieroglyphics at all but more like geometric symbols.KING: I want to pick up there in a minute, but I want to -- hold on one second, Jesse. I want to toss to film clip of your father talking a little about this. Let's watch.(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JESSE MARCEL, SR., 509TH BOMB GROUP: One thing I was certain of, being familiar with all air activities, that it was not a weather balloon nor an aircraft nor a missile. It was something else, of which -- we didn't know what it was. There were just fragments strewn all over the area. So we proceeded to pick up the parts. A lot of it had a lot of little numbers with symbols that -- to me, I call them hieroglyphics because I could not interpret them. They could not be read. They were just like symbols of something that meant something. These little numbers could not be broken, could not be burned. I even tried to burn that, would not burn. See, that stuff weighs nothing. It's not any thicker than tinfoil in a pack of cigarettes.(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Jesse, subsequently, did your father come home and tell you and your mother to forget everything?
MARCEL: Well, he sure did. As I understood, he flew the material to Fort Worth to General Roger Ramey, who was 8th Air Force commander, for his information. And when my dad got back the next day or the day after, he sat my mother and myself down and told us under no uncertain terms were we to ever discuss this issue again. Of course, here I'm talking about, but -- but that was very definitely one of the commands that he gave us, is not to talk about it, not with your friends, not with anybody, not even family members.
KING: So the obvious, Jesse, is what do you believe?
MARCEL: Well, I think it's something very extraordinary. I don't know what it was. But since that time, I -- and thinking more about this, I can't help but believe that it was something that came from another civilization, much like a space probe that we're sending to other planets right now and -- because the material was unique, like I say. And I do know it was not a weather balloon or even a mogul (ph) balloon, like the Air Force later said, because the material was totally different.
KING: Nancy, what do you -- I know your father said, Say nothing, and he wouldn't tell you what, and Truman and all that. What do you believe?
JOHNSTON: I believe that something obviously happened out there in the countryside close to Roswell that the government has tried very hard all these years to keep us from understanding and knowing about. Since I was not a witness, I have no personal knowledge of what it was, but it had to have been something very big at that time that the government wanted covered up.
KING: Now, Glenn, you still live -- you live in Roswell. Do you believe there's...
DENNIS: That's true...
(CROSSTALK)KING: Do you believe there's still stuff there?
DENNIS: Well, they go out every year, every year after all of the snows and the winter. These government people go out with Geiger counters and everything else, and they have this all marked off up there. And I don't know if they found anything else or not because they do not consult us anymore at all. But I do know the ranchers and I know people up there because our mortuary has been involved up there with most of it -- I mean, with the people there, and very seldom will we ever talk about it. Once in a while, we'll sit down and mention something, but not very often.
KING: Jesse, you think the government set your father up to be kind of a fall guy here?
MARCEL: Well, he was a good soldier. He was just following orders. And I'm sure that he was told to bring the message home to the family that -- that not to talk about it because, apparently, somebody found out that we actually saw the material. And you know, years later, I asked him about the possibility of something being still out there, and he said, No, no, no. They vacuumed that place up, period.
KING: Now, you stay with us, Jesse. Nancy, thanks very much for being with us. We'll hold Glenn, and we'll be -- thank you, Nancy. We appreciate your input. We'll come back with more. We'll meet our full panel later. Don't go away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 1947, Americans found their skies filled with all sorts of strange flying objects.UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The UFO phenomenon really took off, actually, in June of 1947 in the state of Washington when a pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold saw many objects going in formation at a very, very high speed by Mount Rainier in Washington.UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Arnold said that nine silvery objects he'd seen looked like saucers skipping over a pond. The next day, his story was front-page news, and a new term entered the American lexicon: flying saucer.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP - JUNE, 1997)
COL. JOHN HAYNES, U.S. AIR FORCE: Over that period of time, dummies were dropped all around there, and I think it's logical to assume that the people there saw Air Force ambulances come out, they saw gurneys come out, they saw body bags come out because the dummies were put into the body bags to protect them. They saw people in pith helmet, they saw people in shorts out there brushing the bushes, looking for the remnants of the balloons. And when you put all that stuff together and spin it, you find that it fits perfectly with many of the occurrences in Roswell during that era.(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Remaining with us is Glenn Dennis, who worked at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico, 56 year ago. Staying with us in Helena, Montana, is Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr., the son of Major Jesse Marcel. Joining us now from Roswell is Donald Schmitt. Donald Schmitt is the former co-director of J. Alan (ph) Hynek Center for UFO Studies. He's the author of dozens of articles about UFOs, two best- selling books about Roswell. In San Francisco is Leslie Kean. Leslie's an investigative journalist, director of investigation of the Coalition for Freedom of Information. She's looking into connections of the 1965 incident in Kecksburg (ph), Pennsylvania's. It's been called "Pennsylvania's Roswell."
She's not an expert on Roswell. We'll go to her in a little while. Dr. William Doleman is an archaeologist, principal investigator for the University of New Mexico's School of Contract Archaeology. And he conducted a Sci-Fi Channel-sponsored archaeological dig at the purported UFO crash site in Roswell in September of 2002.Donald, what is your read on all of this?
DONALD SCHMITT, FORMER CO-DIR. HYNEK CTR. FOR UFO STUDIES: Well, I think what has impressed me most of all, especially within the recent years, pertaining to the investigation, as even Nancy Strickland (ph) was describing, the level of extreme pressure for these people who were involved to retain their silence, to keep this event, keep the experience with them for as long as they did, withholding the information even from their loved ones, their wives, their children. And as you all know that a deathbed testimony is admissible in a court of law as physical evidence, and sadly, that's something that we are concentrating on right now. And to date, not a single one of these people on their deathbeds are describing any type of weather balloon, rocket, aircraft, anything conventional. Invariably, they all describe the bodies recovered, as well. And I'm not talking about anthropomorphic wooden crash dummies.
KING: Dr. Doleman, what do you believe?
WILLIAM DOLEMAN, PH.D., LED 2002 ROSWELL ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG: I believe that, clearly, something happened or it wouldn't have made the news. At the same time, I kind of maintain a position in which I'm a scientific investigator looking for physical evidence, and I'm not in the business of evaluating the testimony of various people. Instead, I'm engaged in a project that, as far as I know, represents the first intensive effort at what -- at least -- to find some kind of physical evidence of whatever happened back there in 1947. And so in terms of what I believe, it's really kind of irrelevant because what I believe is that scientific investigation is the best way to go about looking for that physical evidence.
KING: Jesse, why do you believe, if it occurred, the Army wanted to cover it up? What's the big deal? Why not tell us there is life somewhere else?
MARCEL: I wish I knew the answer to that question because, for some reason, they are not ready for the public to know what's really out there, in spite of the fact that we're sending probes ourselves to other planets. And obviously, there are civilizations out there that are far advanced of us and can send probes here. So I really don't know the answer to the questions, why they're trying to keep it a secret.KING: Leslie, what happened at Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965?
LESLIE KEAN, JOURNALIST INVESTIGATING "PA'S ROSWELL": Well, something came down in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965. An object was seen in the sky. There was a meteorite that night, and it went through a number of different states. Citizens of the community saw -- some of them saw it actually make a few turns. It came in fairly slowly and landed in the woods near Kecksburg. A number of witnesses actually saw the object on the ground. Others saw a very extensive military presence come into the region. They cordoned off the area. They kept people away and eventually carted away something on the back of a flatbed truck.This is what the people of the area tell us. The Air Force has told us that nothing came down that night. So we have a contradiction here, and I'm interested in trying to access information that will solve that mystery.
KING: What do you believe?
KEAN: I don't know what it was. There's no way to know. We know that something came down. It could have been a Russian probe. We don't know what it was, and I'm not in a position to formulate an opinion. I just want -- I believe that the people have the right to the information, the people of Pennsylvania, in particular, who have really suffered a lot by having that information denied to them. And I just think people have a right to know. It was, you know, 1965. Why not tell people what happened there?
KING: We're going to take a break. Jesse Marcel, thanks very much for joining us.When we come back, our panel will remain, and we'll also meet Julie Schuster, the executive director of the International UFO Museum. We'll also be including your phone calls. We're discussing Roswell, New Mexico, 56 years ago.Charles Gibson of "Good Morning America" is tomorrow night's special guest. Don't go away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And so Ramey told the press that all this stuff was, was simply a weather balloon. And that was what most of the press published the next day.
SCHMITT: They never saw the real material. The real material went on to Washington at that time. So Marcel is ordered to pose with the substituted radar reflector balloon. So the first press release, there was a flying saucer, and six hours later, We're sorry, ladies and gentlemen. It's just a weather balloon. The question is, which press release is the true story?
(END VIDEO CLIP)(COMMERCIAL BREAK)(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Major Marcel (ph) and Captain Sheridan Cavet (ph) traveled to the Foster Ranch and spent a day gathering the strange wreckage. Marcel was so intrigued by the debris that on his way back to the base, he stopped by his home to show his family what he'd found. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My dad came into my room, very excited and he wanted to show us some material that he'd found. I think he -- the inclination or the intimation there was this was part of a flying saucer. (END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Discussing the events in Roswell, New Mexico. Joining us now is Julie Shuster. She is the executive director of the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell. The earlier guest, Walter Haut, is her father. What is the -- what did we see at the museum, Julie?
JULIE SHUSTER, EXEC. DIR., INTL. UFO MUSEUM AT ROSWELL: We have a lot of things to offer and one of the things that we try to do is show what Roswell looked like in 1947, give our visitors a glimpse of what Roswell looked like and one of the things we do is our radio display with the teletype and the audio control that show what the radio station may have looked like where Mac Brazel was interviewed.
KING: Do you show anything resembling what might have been captured there?
SHUSTER: We have a lot of artists' renditions of what the saucers may have looked like. We do have a few other displays that give some interpretations.
KING: We know what your father thinks. What do you think?
SHUSTER: Now if I said I agreed with my father, because he's sitting here -- no -- I believe that something did happen. These were people with incredible integrity and very conservative and if they said something happened, something happened.
KING: Donald Schmitt, why would the government -- this has been asked over the years, every time we hear about UFOs, what are they hiding? For what purpose?
SCHMITT: Well, in just looking at the history, specifically of New Mexico in 1947, I'm amazed when I especially lecture on the college circuit when you ask where was first atomic bomb detonated and invariably most people say Japan, whereas anybody here in New Mexico, historically knows it happened right here, just about 150 miles west of Roswell. Roswell was the hot bed of all military research and testing at that time, the captured V-2 rockets and if we go by the Air Force's Project Blue Book records, which would suggest that there were more UFO sightings here in 1947 than anywhere else, whereas there were also more Soviet spies here...
KING: But the question is, why would they keep the information from the public, assuming it's all true?
SCHMITT: Well, that would be part of it, the fact that it immediately became a concern of the high ranking officials at the Pentagon that if this was of anything of a foreign design and it was some new intelligence, something that could potentially be reverse engineered, replicated, that it would become an immediate race with the Soviets, something that we possessed and hopefully they did not.
KING: And that wouldn't be the thinking now. So we assume that this information is passed along, so why doesn't -- Rumsfeld release it?
SCHMITT: Well, as you have had former President Carter and former President Clinton, the question could be posed to either one of them, whereas they themselves tried to gain access to information, actually tried to release information specifically on UFOs and specifically on Roswell and yet they failed. It is our position -- my partner Thomas Carey and I -- that it is still a cover up of ignorance, that they have physical proof, but they still don't have the answers as to from where, from why and from whom.
KING: Glenn, why do you think they are not releasing it?
DENNIS: Well, from what I've been told, and being interviewed, the problem is that whoever has this energy could control the whole world and if we don't have the elements on our planet or anything else to reproduce these, then it could be a problem. I've heard this from three or four different sources and maybe that's true. I don't know. If you remember, the Orson Welles deal. KING: "War of the Worlds."
DENNIS: Yes.
KING: Yes.
DENNIS: And they didn't know if that would happen in New Mexico or around the world, or anything else if we were being invaded by aliens.
KING: Before we go to calls, Dr. Doleman, what do we know, know. What can you definitively scientifically say?
DOLEMAN: Well, we were funded by the Sci-Fi Channel back in September of last year to conduct an archaeological test excavation at the putative Roswell impact site, which is one of two or three sites. We were led to that location by Don Schmitt and what we did was implement some fairly standard archaeology test excavations methods in a staged research project to look for evidence of the sort that had been originally reported by the eyewitnesses and that primarily includes debris, which was ostensibly all cleaned up, and a gouge or furrow mark in the ground that was made by something that hit the ground and then skipped back up in the air and came back down in another locations. So the methods that we used to look for that involved geophysical prospection using electromagnetic conductivity and metal detection.
KING: I -- I don't want to get into too much technical stuff.
DOLEMAN: Yes, I'm trying to keep it..
KING: What we know?
DOLEMAN: What we know is that during the process of that investigation, we recovered some things that will be analyzed. We have soil samples in which we'll look for evidence of unusual chemical composition using fairly standard geological techniques, under the assumption vacuumed or not, if there was debris, a lot of it was small, just like a broken glass and not all of it was recovered and some of it must be in the dirt out there if there is debris. We also know that we found in one of the back hoe trenches that we excavated an unusual feature that had essentially the shape that you'd expect if there was a gouge and trench and the backhoe trench where that thing was found was right where there was supposed to be a gouge. And so, essentially we're still in the analytical stage and the results of the analysis are going to be, I think I made available in a show presented by Sci-Fi coming up in October.
KING: Let me get a call here. Reykkavik, Iceland, hello.
CALLER: Hello.
KING: Hi.
CALLER: How have you, Larry?
KING: Fine. What's the question?
CALLER: Don't you think stories about the aliens being small people with large heads and large eyes and small mouths just came out of the experiments the military were doing after the war? They used children's bodies to investigate the effects of radiation on the human body.
KING: Any truth to that, Donald?
SCHMITT: The Air Force, in its continuing effort to provide alternative explanations and theories became -- reached a ridiculous level in 199, on the 50th anniversary, when it was suggested that these were anthropomorphic wooden crash dummies, albeit five years removed from 1947, with the suggestion that the witnesses were merely time compressing the decades within their memories. And until they are able to provide a single witness contrary to our own, as evidenced by Jessie Marcel's father and others that we have interviewed and have signed sworn affidavits -- until they can provide a witness at the debris field, at the impact site, at the base, on any of the outgoing and incoming flights involved, suggesting this was an alternative explanation, something prosaic, we will continue to go where the witnesses and the testimony lead us.
KING: Let me get a break. As we go to break, we remind you that the clips you are seeing are from Sci-Fi Channel's documentary "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence." It's now available on DVD, and there you see the cover of the DVD.And we'll be back with more calls. Don't go away.(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COL. JOHN HAYNES U.S. AIR FORCE: They are talking about 1947. You're talking about dummies used in the '50s, almost a decade later. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm afraid that's a problem that we have with time compression. I don't know what they saw in '47 but I'm quite sure it probably was project Mogul. I think if you find that people talk about things over a period of time, they begin to lose exactly when the date was and there were lots of dummies dropped. There were 2,500 balloons launched during this 30-year period in New Mexico alone.(COMMERCIAL BREAK)(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's the matter, James? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: More of them are coming. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you mean? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Different ones. Like him. Many different races. Different species. They're coming! UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you okay? (END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Julie Shuster, do a lot of people come to that museum?
SHUSTER: Yes, we have people from around the world coming. And last year we had over 205,000 visitors through our doors.
KING: What's that to your right?
SHUSTER: This is Harold our anthropomorphic, he is one of the explanations that was give that we mistook or the people of Roswell in 1947 mistook as an alien. The only problem was he wasn't used until 1952 to the late 1960s. So, we don't think he looks like an alien.
KING: Do most the people come, are they come as believers?
SHUSTER: I think a lot of them do. I can't say most. We have people that come with believe, don't believe, or never going to believe. But a lot of people come and want to have questions answered, if possible.
KING: Leslie Kean, what was found in Kecksburg?
KEAN: Well, Larry, that what is we want to find out, because we don't know.
KING: You mean, they won't show you?
KEAN: That is why we're doing the freedom of information act initiative. We have a law firm working with us and we got a history -- archives research firm. We have got a private investigator. We got a team of people trying to get the documentation that will tell us what came down. And that's why we are working on it. We don't know.
KING: Hamilton, New Jersey, hello.
CALLER: Hi. I have a question for Glenn.
KING: Go ahead.
CALLER: Did you see what the military put in the coffin that was (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
KING: Did you ever see anything in a coffin, Glenn?
DENNIS: No, I did not. I did not see it. They were all shipped out in what we call body bags and put in a hermetically sealed container and was flown directly to Wright-Patterson.
KING: Tampa, Florida. Hello.
CALLER: Yes, my question for your panel is, what effect, if any did the Cold War between United States and Russia have on disclosure of information on possible UFO crashes such as the one in Roswell in 1947.
KING: Don Schmitt has already referred to that. You think a great effect, right Don?
SCHMITT: Yes, of course it did. Almost a predecessor to our race to the moon, for example. And our development of atomic propulsion. The soviets won't detonate their first atomic bomb until August 1949 but our concern certainly was as to development of such technology and in the event of such a crash here at Roswell, again, certainly the hope that we were the only ones in possession. And we also believe that it may have also become a bit of a bargaining tool. The suggestion it was merely a weather balloon was something that even Premier Joseph Stalin didn't believe back in '47. And there are documents that suggest that he was very concerned that we had even upped our technology regarding the atomic bomb.
KING: Calgary, Ontario, Canada.
CALLER: Larry, a great fan.
KING: Thank you.
CALLER: It seems that the most frequent reports of UFO sightings are in the United States. You don't hear much about sightings in other countries throughout the world.
KING: Doctor Doleman, are there others?
DOLEMAN: Unfortunately, I'm totally not an expert in the UFO phenomenon. And I am an expert in archaeology, and finding physical evidence. But I'm afraid I can't answer that question. KING: Donald are there others?
SCHMITT: Yes. If I might, in fact, at the center for UFO studies, for example, as they cataloged reports from all over the world, we have reports from almost as many countries that presently are in the United Nations.
KING: Why would you guess, Don, they land in Roswell, they don't land in Washington? They land in Ennui, they don't land in Paris. Why not a large area where we could all see them? SCHMITT: That is always been the nature of the beast, so to speak. In other words, the phenomenon it is has been very late night, very rural, very isolated, yet there have been profound cases over military strategic air command facilities, in fact, even the buzzing of the White House in subsequent weeks in July of 1952 were formations of objects were tracked and aircraft scrambling from Andrews Air Force Base on these unknowns. So again, Roswell...
KING: Not just remote areas?
SCHMITT: New Mexico I think it had to do with the fact it was hot bed of military activity at the time. And indeed in dealing with something off the planet they were concerned with our military potential back in 1947.
KING: We'll be back with more moments and more phone calls on this ever-fascinating phenomenon. Don't go away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the front of the draw it said "Operation Blue Book." This might interest you in big (UNINTELLIGIBLE) photo. Roswell, '47. One picture showed three dead aliens laying side by side, apparently on some kind of a canvas or cloth, and showed two others standing side by side, I assume they were the ones that lived. BRYANT GUMBEL, HOST: According to Cox the file contained photos of the crashed spacecraft. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Saucer, as they call it. Was not round as it's been depicted in most cases. It was more egg-shaped, front to rear. (END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Julie, what does officialdom think of your museum?
SHUSTER: We've had no response, that I know, of from any official sources. We've opened up. We don't try to tell people one way or the other. So, nobody has questioned us, that we know of. KING: What's that over there to your left?
SHUSTER: This is a prop. This alien was created as a prop for the movie Roswell in 1994 and he is one of our most-photographed, most enjoyed exhibits. People really like to check him out, and see what the aliens might have looked like. KING: That's been the general description of those who reported to have seen them, that's the general description as to how they looked, right? SHUSTER: Yes, sir, it was a composite of witness accounts.
KING: Thanks Julie.Oakland, California, hello.
CALLER: Hi Larry. A quick comment. First, there has been UFO sightings of a major city such as Mexico City...
KING: They never land anywhere, though. They've been sighted everywhere, but they only land in Wallawallawalla.
CALLER: and possible sightings in Phoenix. My question is why are UFO investigations generally not taken seriously? Why are they laughed off as science fiction?
KING: Leslie.
KEAN: Well, she's right. There's a strong attitude of ridicule in the media and everywhere else. I think it's become a cultural phenomenon over many, many years. I think a lot of it is because people are not informed about the issue. If journalists and scientists and others were to study the data, to study what we do know, and to listen to some of the experts that have talked about the issue, I think they would change their minds.
But it has become sort of inculcated into our culture. So I encourage people to do some research into this phenomena and, I think, they will discover it worthy of investigation and worthy of news coverage and there are scientists in this country and around the world deserve resource to solve this problem for us. And we can have these wonderful witnesses coming forward. We can have documentaries made for years and years and years. We aren't going to solve the problem until we get our scientists on board. Get them the resources they need to find out for us, what these things are and to solve this problem once and for all. And I think that is what is needed. The Ridicule factor has to go.
KING: Hamburg, Germany. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Larry. You are just great. My question is, how could aliens visit the Earth if nothing can travel faster than the speed of light?
KING: And not what?
CALLER: Speed of light?
KING: How co-- Donald, do you get that question?
SCHMITT: How could they travel the great distances and Dr. Heinich (ph) used the analogy of a deck of playing cards and the thickness of a card equally the distance from the Earth to the Moon being a single card. And the distance from Alpha Centauri 4.3 light years being 19 miles of playing cards. So it truly is, as far as astronomers and astrophysicists, for example -- that it is beyond acceptance within their field. But we still have to accept the possibilities of parallel universes, interdimensional travel, worm holes, black holes and that type of thing and even teleportation and possibly time travel.
KING: Glenn, do you think we'll ever going to know the whole story?
DENNIS: Well, not at the rate it's going now. There's some sightings just recently in Australia and New Zealand and also I have a call the other day that people that had been in Egypt visiting the pyramids and they shut them down for three or four days and no tourists going out there on a count of the sightings.
KING: Go ahead, Glenn.
DENNIS: I don't know. I think more of the public understands this, the more they know about it, the better the whole world will be.
KING: Dr. Doleman, do you think we're going to get answers?
DOLEMAN: Well, I -- hard to say if we will or not, but I think that Leslie made a very important point, and that's one of the things that interested me in this project I did out there, that is, that all of the Roswell story, up until this point is largely based on eyewitness testimony and anecdotal evidence a few suggestive documents and things like that. And there is actually until this point, no one has bothered to go out and look for actual physical evidence. My part in this whole thing was to apply archaeological techniques to what is essentially an archaeological problem. Go to a site and see if there is evidence.
From CNN.com
Friday, November 09, 2007
TIME: It's official: Peak oil is here and "the long emergency" has begun
This is a few days old, but nonetheless very much worth sharing:
When historians glance back at 2007 through the haze of their coal-fired stoves, they will mark this year as the onset of the Long Emergency – or whatever they choose to call the unraveling of industrial economies and the complex systems that constituted them. And if they retain any sense of humor – which is very likely since, as wise Sam Beckett once averred, nothing is funnier than unhappiness – they will chuckle at the assumptions that drove the doings and mental operations of those in charge back then (i.e. now).
These are the words of Jim Kunstler--sometime Rolling Stone writer, suburbia-hater, peak oil hardliner and author of the doom-enthusiast's bible, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. His blog post goes on and on and on, but the gist of it is this: Peak oil is now clearly upon us, so let the collapse of Western society begin.
Now I'm still mighty dubious of the second part (although I reserve the right to chuckle at my current assumptions as I forage for grubs 20 years hence), but the man is onto something about peak oil. I've just been reading through the coverage of and some of the presentations from the annual Oil & Money conference held in London earlier this week, and it's hard to come away with anything but the impression that world oil production--currently about 73 million barrels a day--is never going to go much higher than that.
Much of the talk was couched in terms of shortages in production capacity, petroleum engineers, etc. That is, not the actual supply of oil under the ground. So maybe this would be more a plateau than a peak. But with oil consumption in the developing world going up at 3% a year (it's more or less flat in the wealthy countries), even a plateau would mean higher and higher prices over time. You ready for that?
NVDL: It's going to start happening...a car is going to seem very unsexy, as our addiction to oil propels us towards the equivalent of a car wreck. How sexy is that?
Rising Demand for Oil Provokes New Energy Crisis (NYT)
It's a Beautiful World (NVDL)
The mist this morning gave the purple confettied a soft, even romantic edge. I know one couple who must be feeling romance sweeping them into this weekend; they're going to Dullstroom. The cool mist though gave Jozi a sort of early-morning-at-the-seaside feel. The day before the Argus in March this year was enveloped in just such cool swirling vapours.
And as I say, in the early deserted streets, it feels like the aftermath of a giant celebration, like the end of a world war, or the marriage of the saviour of a nation to a charming princess. But it is just a late spring day, with the Jacarandas shedding their blossoms, and a bunch of cyclists slithering superlight over these soft carpets.
We were late for the bunch today, so it ended up being quite a hard chase on a Friday. Friday is usually an easy day. We caught them at around halfway, at about the Hendrik Potgieter flyover. When we turned, a car had stopped in the middle of a 4 lane highway, albeit it the lane closest to the sidewalk, but the problem was that approaching cars would have a problem seeing a white car over and above the headon glare of the sun through white mist. Did the driver run out of fuel?
Nice ride back, in the safety and comfort of a large group. My body was tired, I could feel it, and my HRM confirmed it. My heart rate reluctantly approached 160, and despite major efforts, would not go more than a beat or two beyond. Recently I;ve been capable of getting it to around 171, but this morning my body retreated to at least 10 beats shy of that figure. Here are the stats:
Time: 1:35:46
HR: 138 ave 163 max
Distance: 44.6km
Ave Speed: 27.9km/h
Alt Max: 1696
Temperature: 11/12/24
Ascent: 435mKCal: 1382
What was interesting was the final stretch in Illovo, or Rosebank. This is another beautiful treelined section through suburbia, sleepy streets. A blonde runner, beautifully toned smiled and waved at us. We see her fairly often.
As we turned up the street, a few riders intoned: "I feel better now." "You know I suddenly feel very strong."
I said: "It's a beautiful world," and everyone laughed.
Milliondollarpubes: Crazy Ideas or Easy Money?
Remember the guy who sold a page full of pixels at something like a pound a pixel, and sold them all? Well now there is 2million pixels, and also milliondollarpubes.
What is scary is that 191 pubic hairs have already been sold.
Check it out:
How Selling Pixels May Yield a Million Bucks
To start something like this you could try: The Million Dollar Script ™
North Sea surge brings flood risk (BBC NEWS)
A storm in the North Sea has left Britain and the Netherlands facing the worst flood threat in decades with tidal surges predicted early on Friday.
Flood defences have been put on alert on the entire Dutch coast and flood warnings are in place for the eastern and northern coasts of Britain.
A tidal wave in 1953 killed more than 2,000 people in both countries.
Parts of UK struck by tornadoes
Thousands evacuated in flood zone
New insect species arrives in UK
Oil platforms have been closed off the Norwegian coast and gales are expected in Germany and Denmark.
The Dutch transport ministry said this was the first time since 1976 the whole North Sea coast was under alert.
Maritime traffic in Rotterdam was halted, as the authorities closed the giant Maeslant barrier that guards entrance to the largest port in Europe for the first time since its construction in the 1990s.
It took half-an-hour for the two doors of the barrier across the Nieuwe Waterweg to meet, spanning a channel 360 metres wide.
Rotterdam will remain closed until 1700GMT on Friday, a port spokesman said.
One-third of the land mass of the Netherlands is under sea level.
Flood warnings
In Britain, the Thames River and Dartford Creek barriers are being shut as waters are forecast to surge 1.5 metres (5 feet) above normal sea levels.
Families along the Norfolk coast have been protecting their homes
UK government warned large areas of Norfolk and Kent coasts were at risk of severe flooding and the Met Office warned of gusts of up to 145km/h (90mph) for the Orkney and Shetland islands in Scotland.
The storm surge is expected to peak around dawn on Friday, and several hundred people have left their homes near Great Yarmouth in Norfolk.
Severe gale warnings were issued in Germany and Denmark, with wind gusts of up to 125km/h (80mph) expected.
In Germany, regions around the Elbe and Elm rivers were under flood warnings.
The North Sea storm affected oil industry in Norway, the fifth largest exporter of crude in the world, with the closure of oil platforms off its coast.
Norway's oil production of 220,000 barrels per day is expected to be slashed by 10% possibly leading to increases in the price of crude, already at record levels, experts say.
NVDL: The UK is basically the world's canary in terms of climate change. It has thrived so far thanks to an exceptional belt of warming water being diverted towards its shores - we all know the schpiel. We know that polar melt will shut it down. Since ice sheets the size of South Africa (or Texas and California combined) have melted and not frozen back, it's logical to assume that it is only a question of time before the British Isles reverts to a more Ice Age type of climate. That said, perhaps we will first see a temporary phase of extraordinary warming, as we are seeing in Canada, and extreme storms, as is also the case in Canada (spewing tornadoes and the like).
Once again we have this apparently unique situation where the world's weather has an impaqct on global fuel prices, and that has an effect on every person. The next time you catch yourself wondering where you fit in, in all this, remember that every time you drive your car, you and everyone else is doing your bit to inject energy (heat) into the atmosphere. We're now at a point where there is so much energy in the atmosphere, that extreme weather becomes the convention.
Yesterday I submitted HOLIDAY to PanMacMillan. It's obviously encouraging to hear that one person who read my book, then read it again 3 times. Another woman who read it had nightmares. A teenager read it within 2-3 days. It basically paints a picture of living in the world where weather patterns have gone beyond tipping point, and we see the atmosphere basically transitioning into a slow chemical reaction.
Flood defences have been put on alert on the entire Dutch coast and flood warnings are in place for the eastern and northern coasts of Britain.
A tidal wave in 1953 killed more than 2,000 people in both countries.
Parts of UK struck by tornadoes
Thousands evacuated in flood zone
New insect species arrives in UK
Oil platforms have been closed off the Norwegian coast and gales are expected in Germany and Denmark.
The Dutch transport ministry said this was the first time since 1976 the whole North Sea coast was under alert.
Maritime traffic in Rotterdam was halted, as the authorities closed the giant Maeslant barrier that guards entrance to the largest port in Europe for the first time since its construction in the 1990s.
It took half-an-hour for the two doors of the barrier across the Nieuwe Waterweg to meet, spanning a channel 360 metres wide.
Rotterdam will remain closed until 1700GMT on Friday, a port spokesman said.
One-third of the land mass of the Netherlands is under sea level.
Flood warnings
In Britain, the Thames River and Dartford Creek barriers are being shut as waters are forecast to surge 1.5 metres (5 feet) above normal sea levels.
Families along the Norfolk coast have been protecting their homes
UK government warned large areas of Norfolk and Kent coasts were at risk of severe flooding and the Met Office warned of gusts of up to 145km/h (90mph) for the Orkney and Shetland islands in Scotland.
The storm surge is expected to peak around dawn on Friday, and several hundred people have left their homes near Great Yarmouth in Norfolk.
Severe gale warnings were issued in Germany and Denmark, with wind gusts of up to 125km/h (80mph) expected.
In Germany, regions around the Elbe and Elm rivers were under flood warnings.
The North Sea storm affected oil industry in Norway, the fifth largest exporter of crude in the world, with the closure of oil platforms off its coast.
Norway's oil production of 220,000 barrels per day is expected to be slashed by 10% possibly leading to increases in the price of crude, already at record levels, experts say.
NVDL: The UK is basically the world's canary in terms of climate change. It has thrived so far thanks to an exceptional belt of warming water being diverted towards its shores - we all know the schpiel. We know that polar melt will shut it down. Since ice sheets the size of South Africa (or Texas and California combined) have melted and not frozen back, it's logical to assume that it is only a question of time before the British Isles reverts to a more Ice Age type of climate. That said, perhaps we will first see a temporary phase of extraordinary warming, as we are seeing in Canada, and extreme storms, as is also the case in Canada (spewing tornadoes and the like).
Once again we have this apparently unique situation where the world's weather has an impaqct on global fuel prices, and that has an effect on every person. The next time you catch yourself wondering where you fit in, in all this, remember that every time you drive your car, you and everyone else is doing your bit to inject energy (heat) into the atmosphere. We're now at a point where there is so much energy in the atmosphere, that extreme weather becomes the convention.
Yesterday I submitted HOLIDAY to PanMacMillan. It's obviously encouraging to hear that one person who read my book, then read it again 3 times. Another woman who read it had nightmares. A teenager read it within 2-3 days. It basically paints a picture of living in the world where weather patterns have gone beyond tipping point, and we see the atmosphere basically transitioning into a slow chemical reaction.
Six in 10 consumers see recession: survey
By Brad Dorfman
Wed Nov 7, 8:30 AM ET
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Six in 10 consumers say a recession is likely in the next three to six months, according to a survey on holiday spending released on Wednesday.
ADVERTISEMENT
In a telephone survey by America's Research Group, 45.7 percent of 1,000 respondents said a recession was "somewhat likely," and 14.3 percent said it was "very likely." Forty percent said a recession was "not likely."
The interviews were conducted November 1-4. The error factor is plus or minus 4.3 percent.
Recession fears ahead of the holiday shopping season have been kindled by concerns about jobs and the U.S. housing meltdown.
The survey found the number of consumers who feel worse off financially this Christmas season has risen to almost one-third of all Americans, up from 18.5 percent last year.
Still, even with questions about the strength of the economy, the wealthy seem intent on spending for the holidays, no matter what.
For more go here.
Wed Nov 7, 8:30 AM ET
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Six in 10 consumers say a recession is likely in the next three to six months, according to a survey on holiday spending released on Wednesday.
ADVERTISEMENT
In a telephone survey by America's Research Group, 45.7 percent of 1,000 respondents said a recession was "somewhat likely," and 14.3 percent said it was "very likely." Forty percent said a recession was "not likely."
The interviews were conducted November 1-4. The error factor is plus or minus 4.3 percent.
Recession fears ahead of the holiday shopping season have been kindled by concerns about jobs and the U.S. housing meltdown.
The survey found the number of consumers who feel worse off financially this Christmas season has risen to almost one-third of all Americans, up from 18.5 percent last year.
Still, even with questions about the strength of the economy, the wealthy seem intent on spending for the holidays, no matter what.
For more go here.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Thought For The Day
“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”
—H. G. Wells, 1904
Financial Indicators (NOW)
The gold price continues to step up in tandem with the oil price as global uncertainty picks up. It seems what's bad for the world is good for South Africa, including the demise of the dollar. Ameerican kerfuffling in Iran is also propelling that nation (and Russia) to make oil transactions in Euro's rather than the dollar. China has also decided to push more of its investments into the Euro. And why not?
Gold 832.65 Up 0.23%
Platinum 1457.00 Up 1.29%
Brent Crude Oil 94.65 Stable 0.00%
Rand - US Dollar 6.4880 Down 0.18%
‘Powerful cocktail’ puts gold in sight of $900
Assassin's Creed (NEW GAMES)
Ubisoft's acrobatic action-adventure breaks new ground left and right; here are the top five reasons you need to play it.
by YVG Staff
WATCH THE EXCLUSIVE LAUNCH TRAILER
1. A Tale of Three Cities
You're not limited to one urban locale. Three major cities populate the game, and you'll have multiple assassination targets and investigations in each. Acre, Jerusalem and Damascus are modeled after their 12th century counterparts, with liberties taken to emphasize stealth and fun rather than history. Finding the highest vantage points in each will open up gameplay maps and missions. To get from one town to the next, you'll travel between the city gates on horseback along dangerous roads. The streets of each burg are dense and complex, with a huge variety of citizenry, mercenaries, soldiers and other honest (and not so honest) folk.
2. Acrobatic Assassination
Prince of Persia players will recognize the combat system in some ways. There are nice touches that allow for a quick combination of offensive and defensive moves -- anti-hero Altair can bounce swiftly from throwing knives to deflecting and countering attacks. Combat works side by side with the game's high-climbing navigation potential, and you can also pull off classic moves like the drop-down kill. That one has a bad side effect: namely being stranded in a sea of enemies. Better to use the retractable stealth blade quietly and get away clean.
3. Medieval Parkour
Anyone who saw the Bond flick Casino Royale knows parkour; it's the free-running city sport originated in Paris, and it's also a good way to describe the exploration in Assassin's Creed. Since we first saw the game we've been in love with the ability to climb and jump on any surface large enough to grab a finger or foothold, and in practice the sense of total freedom is even more impressive. Simple analog stick movements do it all. You won't want to navigate a game city in the same old way after you get a feel for this one.
4. More Than Meets the Eye
Look beyond the confines of the game's three cities and you'll see a few odd things about the story told within Assassin's Creed. For one, there are those decidedly electronic HUD displays and the weird references to modern technology that you'll see when pausing the game. Combat also displays some techno-flourishes, and there are other telltale signs that your character isn't merely an assassin during the days of the Third Crusade. We can't tell you the real nature of the truth, but it is out there.
5. Social Standing
Not only will your own position within society increase simply by owning one of the fall's best games, your avatar Altair's position within society will constantly rise and fall during the storyline. Your standing can change during the course of any of the investigations that lead to assassination missions; these often require less than desirable actions like pickpocketing and roughing up informants. Guards can see your devilish actions or be informed of them; instead of running openly you'll have to move slowly among the crowd, perhaps posing as if in prayer to deflect attention, or even grabbing a seat on a bench between good citizens to hide while the guards dash by.
From Yahoo.com
2 Essentials for Success (SELF HELP)
J, this is for you.
The first is to decide what it is you want. Set a goal. Be decisive. Live on purpose. Identify who you are and what it is you want. All these things are the same thing: Set a goal.
The second essential for success is to find out what will be required to achieve that goal. This is also your preparation, and your planning. It's also called paying the price.
Life's Like That
The metaphor for life is going on impulse into a shopping mall. Meandering around, unsure of what you want, or how much is in your wallet. You may walk out with nothing, or you may walk out with no money and a bunch of stuff that makes you feel better for an afternoon, but you could really do without.
The Mall and Me
Approach life as you would a trip to the mall. Decide what you want. Be decisive. Choose one thing. Choose the most important thing. Make sure you can afford it. Go and get it. Don't get distracted along the way by all those other things you don't necessarily needs. Don't spend more than you can afford, and make sure there's areason why you're purchasing what you are.
Decide to be Decisive
In the same way, know why your goal is important to you being who you are.
Many many people go through life wanting many different things, and settling for a lot less than they are capable of. This is due to indecisiveness. Now make up your mind, and then move towards what it is you want. Remember we are programmed for failure, whenever we subscribe to this idea of getting something for nothing, or of somehow taking a shortcut and getting something worthwhile. Lose this bargain hunter mentality; instead steel yourself to be hard, to work hard, to graft.
Now consider that the fact that you are alive now, means you, and all those systems within, have survived some tricky scenarios. You must just make sure your programming works, because the hardware almost certainly is top notch.
We Have To Go Nuclear
In South Africa, like the USA, where we not only have no capacity but also decrepit infrastructure, we don't have much of a choice but to go Nuclear.
The other option would be coal, and unless you're Ivo Vegter or Thabo Mbeki or President Bush, or some other Denialist, you might be concerned about the toxicity of the coal route.
You hear about the arguments that nuclear waste lasts millions of years, and of course, that's relevant. Nuclear though is like MacDonald's. It's now a franchise, it's not the healthiest food out there, but it can feed (sustain) millions, while we try to work out something better in the meantime.
The waste product is actually compact; it can be housed in a small garage. This beats the sort of waste, tons and tons, that coal would fire in the atmosphere.
The renewables are nice, but they really don't bring much power to the table. Unless you want 70% of South Africa's landmass Uglified with windmills. Not sure how many people would go for that, and I doubt it would be enough anyway.
Denmark has experimented with underwater windmills, and this is an interesting option where tidal waters turn turbines through narrow channels. It's invisible, but I am not sure if we have this sort of underwater geology to make use of.
Another point to make is that start up costs for nuclear are very high, but it is amongst the cleanest and most efficient energy option we have, if not THE cleanest. That's taking into consideration energy OUTPUT.
The minority of people who have spent time figuring out that hydrogen is a hoaz, biofuels amounts to bullshit (although plowing up cheap African land remains a long shot), and electric cars are not solutions, will realise that as far as nuclear goes, it is the only option for keeping the lights on. Unfortunately you can't pour nuclear energy into thirsty motor vehicles. I believe we're long past the sell by date for that solution. We are simply not going to run the world's highway systems the way we are running them now on any combination of 'alternatives'.
We can however move towards rail, and start building walkable communities in the style of the New Urbanists.
Are Computers Logical?
The hit and miss approach to computers usually results in a miss. We've all done it. You're attempting something simple, something that perhaps has usually worked in the past, and then, for whatever reason, no longer does. Yet we then insist on the same procedure and the computer insists on an error message. BEEP. Hit the same key again and again...well, it's like a fly banging its head against a window pain isn't it? Painful!
So where does the logic breakdown, with ourselves or the computer?
In fact, it is a logistical war, but at the end of the day, the computer is simply a logical mathemathical equation providing a result. But you do have two systems basically, at work: the designed logic and then a particular logic of the user, which may be high level (informed logic) or low level (uninformed logic).
Eye In The Pie
It is because we as users cannot possess all the information (for example the repercussions of a download, or the consequences of a request to default a different set of software) that may bring about unexpected, seemingly illogical results, even if we are applying high level logic to an already sophisticated, fundamentally logical system. Actually, these conflicts may not be logical at all (you could argue the intention to download a lot of bunkum software isn't either), but users cannot be expected to keep track (or know) the extent of every conceivable software conflict.
Anecdotal Evidence
Enter a very specialised piece of equipment, the infrared device, on a USB lead. Conventionally you can download to an IRDA on any notebook computer as these are built in. Most users would probably load up through other mobile tech such as mobile phones, blackberries and the like. It just so happens that Heart Rate monitors can conventiently piggy back on this already set-up system, as POLAR have.
So when I chucked my notebook in order to save on excess baggage, when I left Korea (I was already lugging an oversized flatscreen, and through special intervention was allowed to drag it - like Obelix and the menhir - onto the plane), I bought an infrared device to plug into my desktop. I installed the driver, then went on my merry way. But when I flew to South Africa, the computer itself was dismantled, and shipped to South Africa.
Piecemeal
Once the shipped parts arrived, it turned out that humpty dumpty was lucky. Fortunately, between the crumbs of ex-viable computer parts, the hard drives were still intact. But once the newly built machine saw the light of day, the infrared device did not work; it did not read the heart rate monitors urgent, but silent, infra red beam. Why? Because without the original memoryboard, you lose all that 'floating' information, including programs, instals, operating systems and the like. And my device didn't work because it was lost in the plethora of 'floating' information that got washed away by the equiavelent of a tornado.
The device needs a driver
Imagine a small little man that looks like Elmer Fudd, sitting at the door to your computer, and all he does all day is press a switch beside a big INCOMING sign. The name on the switch is: Accept/Deny.
DENY DENY DENY
Well for the passed - what is it - two weeks my Elmer has been denying me the use of my infrared device. Because just like when I had a newly pieced together computer after returning from Korea, my recent foray into upgrading (aka the ability to use your computer more effectively, and in particular utiliting technologies faster speeds...)had the unexpected, and highly counterintuitive result of disallowing any infrared downloading. Yes, this 2 week delay flies in the face of the idea that upgrading your computer is going to make your life that bit easier, at least over the short term. It's frustrating.
As Easy as PII
You'd think downloading an infrared device driver on google would be easy. Actually, it is easy, it's just that selecting the right one is not. Sure you can select drivers to download but they just won't work, or you'll get funny small boxes that mess up your display. In this respect, computers for all their logic, become damn complicated.
In the end, on my own, I managed to source a driver, one that allowed me to download through my IRDA device, but woe betide me when I got home, it did not work on my home computer. How logical is that?
In the end the person who went with me to Yongsan Electronic's Market in Seoul - one of the world's biggest - to buy the original InfraRed Device (since I was selling him my notebook) sourced an appropriate driver within a day on the net. It worked first time.
Computers are logical, and sometimes people are, but never the twain shall meet. Perhaps that's a good thing in the scheme of things. Right now, I'm not convinced. There's a test for your logic stream.
The Next Prez for SA is.... (POLL RESULTS)
56% voted for Tokyo, with Helen and Cyril bringing up the rear. Thabo and Jacob got the crumbs of the pie. But this is the blogosphere. In the real world, Jacob Zuma remains a possibly unassailable candidate to lead the country further through into the millennium.
Zuma, like Bush, makes sense. We live in a country where the government does not ostensibly care (in terms of actual effort and focus) about AIDS or crime, Zuma, accused of rape, corruption and unprotected sex with an HIV positive female, is the perfect candidate. If he is elected, we the dumb and distracted, deserve to continue sukkeling.
Bird flu kills 590 ducks in northern Vietnam (REUTERS)
NVDL: Right now we're experiencing a seasonal change, which coincides with the movements of migratory birds.
HANOI, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Bird flu has killed 590 ducks in a northern Vietnam province, the fifth to have reported outbreaks among poultry within about a month, the government said on Wednesday.
The two-month-old ducks started dying on Monday at a farm in Ha Nam province. Tests confirmed on Wednesday the presence of the H5N1 bird flu virus, the Animal Health Department said in its daily report.Further tests also found the H5N1 virus in samples taken from two dead chickens dumped in a river in Ha Nam province, 60 km (37 miles) south of Hanoi, the report said.
The case in Ha Nam brought to five the number of provinces that have confirmed bird flu in poultry since early October. Three of the provinces are in the north, one is in the southern Mekong delta, while the fifth is in the central province of Quang Tri.
Floods that affected Quang Tri in the past two weeks could help spread the virus to nearby areas, an Agriculture Ministry official said.
No human infections have been reported in Vietnam since the virus killed a teenager in early August, one of four deaths among seven Vietnamese known to have been infected this year. Since 2003, bird flu has killed 46 people in Vietnam.
Globally, the H5N1 virus has killed 205 people out of 334 known cases, with most of the deaths in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Egypt, the World Health Organisation figures show. (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh, editing by David Fogarty)
Bird flu kills Indonesian toddler, raises country's death toll to 89
1 day ago
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesian health officials say a toddler has died from bird flu after apparently coming into contact with dead poultry.
Nyoman Kandun, a senior health ministry official, says the four-year-old girl from Tangerang, about 20 kilometres west of the capital Jakarta, died Monday after being in hospital for two days.
Kandun says investigators concluded the girl had contact with dead poultry in her neighbourhood.
Kandun says the death raises the number of people in Indonesia who have died from the disease to 89. The girl is the fourth Indonesian killed by the disease this month.
The World Health Organization says Indonesia's death toll from bird flu now accounts for almost one-half of the recorded 203 fatalities worldwide.
The disease remains hard for people to catch - most cases have so far been traced to contact with infected birds. But experts fear it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, potentially sparking a global pandemic.
Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country and home to millions of backyard chickens, is considered a possible hot spot for spreading the disease.
KwaZulu and Gauteng Rainfall Records, Weather Warning And Weekend Weather
Rainfall records
Looking at the table of rainfall figures below one can see that a number of places received heavy rainfall, with Durban, Greytown and Pennington South breaking their previous 24-hour rainfall record for November. It is also interesting to note that on this one day Durban received 251% of its normal rainfall for the first ten days of the month, while Mount Edgecombe received 227% and Richards Bay 165%.
NVDL: Many of the previous records are recent, 4 out of 6 between 2000 and 2006. Climate change will affect SA by creating a vastly wetter Eastern Region, and drying the Western Interior. All areas will be more susceptible to storms, and extreme weather - floods and droughts.
Also yesterday:
Highest Daily Rain: Was - 49.4mm (2001-11-24) Now: 58.0 (2007-11-06) Witbank
Warning:
Isolated heavy falls of rain are possible in the escarpment and lowveld areas of Mpumalanga and Limpopo, including the Soutpansberg.
Weekend Temperatures:
More:
Icebergs passing north of SANAE IV along the coast of Dronning Maud Land
Serious Beach Erosion continuing along the KwaZulu-Natal Coast
Gauteng Snow
The Legacy of Tropical Cyclone Gamede
Sea Level Pressure Analysis and Satellite-derived Ocean Surface Wind Fields
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
$100: Welcome to a New World
Sleep well tonight because you may well wake up tomorrow, and find yourself in a different world; a world where everyone - including yourself - finds the world to be an entirely different place. A place of reality, consequence and purpose. A place where you can no longer get something for nothing. A place where reality TV somehow has a very ironic, black humor ring to it. A place where attrition is the order of the day. A place where oil prices of $100 will seem benign tomorrow, a place of rapid change, a place of chaos and uncertainty, of unrest and contraction, and the beginning of our collective plunge, our descent, into austerity.
This being the case, what can we do?
Control what you can. What you eat, exercise, and your consumption. Learn to be a good neighbour, you're going to need each other. It may longer be a choice to change, but the choice that does remain is HOW MUCH. Our inner decency will answer this question on each individual level. Let's hope that will be enough.
TIME: Oil Prices: It Gets Worse
"I am sorry to say this, but we are headed toward really bad days," IEA chief economist Fatih Birol told TIME this week.
By VIVIENNE WALT/PARIS
Oil prices hit a record high of $97 a barrel on Tuesday, but the next generation of consumers could look back on that price with envy. The dire predictions of a key report on international oil supplies released Wednesday suggest that oil prices could move irreversibly over the $100 a barrel threshold in the not too distant future, as the global economy faces a serious energy shortage.
Related Articles
Oil Prices: Don‘t Blame OPEC
China Feels the Fuel Pinch
Why Gas Won‘t Get Cheaper
The Great Grab
This gloomy assessment comes from the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based organization representing the 26 rich, gas-guzzling member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The agency is not known for alarmist warnings, and its World Energy Outlook is typically viewed by policy wonks as a solid indicator of global energy supplies.
In a marked change from its traditionally bland, measured tones, the IEA's 2007 report says governments need to make urgent, bold decisions on energy policy, or risk massive environmental and energy-supply crises within two decades — crises and shortages that could spark serious global conflicts.
"I am sorry to say this, but we are headed toward really bad days," IEA chief economist Fatih Birol told TIME this week. "Lots of targets have been set but very little has been done. There is a lot of talk and no action."
The reason for the IEA's alarm is its expectation that economic development will raise global energy demands by about 50% in a generation, from today's 85 million barrels a day to about 116 million barrels a day in 2030. Nearly half that increase in demand will come from just two countries — China and India, which are electrifying hundreds of cities and putting millions of new cars on their roads, most driven by people who once walked, or rode bicycles and buses. By 2030, those two countries will be responsible for two-thirds of the world's carbon gas emissions, which are the primary human activity causing global warming.
India and China have argued against enforcing strict emission controls in their countries, on the grounds that these could hinder their economic growth and prompt a global economic slowdown. But the new IEA report says working with China and India on alternative energy sources and curbing emissions is a matter of global urgency.
The bad news is not only environmental. As the world scrambles to boost energy supplies over the next two decades, an ever-greater percentage of its supplies of oil and gas will come from a dwindling number of countries, largely arrayed around the Persian Gulf, as the massive North Sea and Gulf of Mexico deposits are finally exhausted. That will leave the industrialized countries far more dependent on the volatile Middle East in 2030 than they are today, and the likes of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran will dictate terms to companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron, which increasingly operate as contractors to state-run oil companies in many producer nations.
For the rest, go here.
By VIVIENNE WALT/PARIS
Oil prices hit a record high of $97 a barrel on Tuesday, but the next generation of consumers could look back on that price with envy. The dire predictions of a key report on international oil supplies released Wednesday suggest that oil prices could move irreversibly over the $100 a barrel threshold in the not too distant future, as the global economy faces a serious energy shortage.
Related Articles
Oil Prices: Don‘t Blame OPEC
China Feels the Fuel Pinch
Why Gas Won‘t Get Cheaper
The Great Grab
This gloomy assessment comes from the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based organization representing the 26 rich, gas-guzzling member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The agency is not known for alarmist warnings, and its World Energy Outlook is typically viewed by policy wonks as a solid indicator of global energy supplies.
In a marked change from its traditionally bland, measured tones, the IEA's 2007 report says governments need to make urgent, bold decisions on energy policy, or risk massive environmental and energy-supply crises within two decades — crises and shortages that could spark serious global conflicts.
"I am sorry to say this, but we are headed toward really bad days," IEA chief economist Fatih Birol told TIME this week. "Lots of targets have been set but very little has been done. There is a lot of talk and no action."
The reason for the IEA's alarm is its expectation that economic development will raise global energy demands by about 50% in a generation, from today's 85 million barrels a day to about 116 million barrels a day in 2030. Nearly half that increase in demand will come from just two countries — China and India, which are electrifying hundreds of cities and putting millions of new cars on their roads, most driven by people who once walked, or rode bicycles and buses. By 2030, those two countries will be responsible for two-thirds of the world's carbon gas emissions, which are the primary human activity causing global warming.
India and China have argued against enforcing strict emission controls in their countries, on the grounds that these could hinder their economic growth and prompt a global economic slowdown. But the new IEA report says working with China and India on alternative energy sources and curbing emissions is a matter of global urgency.
The bad news is not only environmental. As the world scrambles to boost energy supplies over the next two decades, an ever-greater percentage of its supplies of oil and gas will come from a dwindling number of countries, largely arrayed around the Persian Gulf, as the massive North Sea and Gulf of Mexico deposits are finally exhausted. That will leave the industrialized countries far more dependent on the volatile Middle East in 2030 than they are today, and the likes of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran will dictate terms to companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron, which increasingly operate as contractors to state-run oil companies in many producer nations.
For the rest, go here.
Get Hardcore: Get Up Early In The Morning
Did you know that one of the indicators for living longer is getting up earlier in the morning? Shah! I read about it in the Financial Mail. Researchers based at the University of California San Siego Scghool of Medicine found that early morning light increases luteinising hormone levels by 70%. LH helps produce testosterone which helps build muscle, cut fat and raise mood.
Who knew?
Got up at 4:30 for another hard cycle this morning. Sky was bruised, but air was lovely and cool, and moist. Must say I always feel great after an early bird cycle, and am not less of a zombie at work as the pattern starts to be integrated into a habituated cycle, a biorhythm.
Distance: 47km
Time: 1hr:47
Next ride is Friday, and will be doing a 100km race over the weekend to make up for this weekend's blapse in Bloem.
Tokyo For President? (POLL CLOSING)
Vote now if you'd prefer a different candidate. Meanwhile Mr Disconnected (aka President Mbeki) reconnected briefly with the country when he donned the Springbok jersey and was briefly manhandled and then hoisted on the shoulders of South Africa's champions.
The proximity and rubbing of shoulders with heroes must have worked a little magic, because shortly after the adoring thousands in the stadium cheered (for him apparently) Mbeki seemed like a man elected by the people, for the people.
He supported White continuing as Bok coach, but once the tide turned, we didn't hear a peep. So who would you want as the next president of this country? Zuma?
Read also:‘Ramaphosa’s my man’
Tough December coming for consumers
South African consumers face a double-whammy of increases next month - Economists are predicting another hike in lending rates, while motorists are expected to receive a nasty surprise at the petrol pump.
Although early in the accounting period, the under-recovery of petrol is already 51.5 cents a litre.
This means that consumers are paying less for oil-rated products than the ruling price.
A big worry came out on the world markets today, with the price of Brent crude oil hitting an historic peak of 95.09 dollars per barrel in trading amid concerns over tight global energy supplies. Earlier, New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for December delivery, hit a record high of 98.46 dollars per barrel.
For the rest of this Sowetan Online article, go here.
Although early in the accounting period, the under-recovery of petrol is already 51.5 cents a litre.
This means that consumers are paying less for oil-rated products than the ruling price.
A big worry came out on the world markets today, with the price of Brent crude oil hitting an historic peak of 95.09 dollars per barrel in trading amid concerns over tight global energy supplies. Earlier, New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for December delivery, hit a record high of 98.46 dollars per barrel.
For the rest of this Sowetan Online article, go here.
Oil At $98 Now
By John Wilen, AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil futures jumped to a new record above $98 a barrel late Tuesday after bombings in Afghanistan and an attack on a Yemeni oil pipeline compounded the supply concerns that have driven crude prices higher in recent weeks.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil futures jumped to a new record above $98 a barrel late Tuesday after bombings in Afghanistan and an attack on a Yemeni oil pipeline compounded the supply concerns that have driven crude prices higher in recent weeks.
Those concerns were also fed by a government prediction Tuesday that domestic oil inventories will fall further this year while consumption rises.
At the pump, meanwhile, gas prices continued to rise, following oil's 39 percent price rally since August. The national average price of a gallon of gas jumped 2 cents overnight to $3.024 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.
Separately, the federal Energy Information Administration reported that diesel fuel prices reached a national average of $3.303 a gallon, a new record.
Light, sweet crude for December delivery rose $2.72 to settle at a record $96.70 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Tuesday after earlier rising as high as $97.10, a new trading record.
Later, the contract surpassed that mark, climbing as high as $98.03 in electronic trading.
Oil's seemingly relentless climb raises the question of how high energy prices will go. If crude does keep going up, it might be some time until consumers see relief at the pump. Some analysts predict prices could rise as high as $3.50 to $4 a gallon next summer.
NVDL: "I wonder whether we should be concerned about this? Do you think we should be? Oh what's that on TV about Britney Spears; turn up the volume..."
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