Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Two conspiracies in one:

Yes, I do believe in aliens, but question whether or not they have visited Earth. And I think the mob was behind the assassination of JFK.

the CIA was behing JFK. ..... ah the magic bullet .... i got pretty addicted on this assassination for a while .. i read like? millions of pages on it ... and it led me into a complete fixation and love for JACKIE KENNEDY :)

aliens ?
well if universe is infinite. alien HAVE to exist. mathematics.
BUT
if universe is infinite, the chance for them to be close to us is very small (~ 0)

It's like they say in The Book:

Space is infinite, and has an infinite number of planets. There's a finite number of planets that are populated. And if you take any finite number and divide it with infinity, the number is so close to zero that there really is no real difference. This means that life exists on 0% of the planets and all the people you happen to come across every day are just products of your imagination.


------------

Now if space in fact was infinite this would make a lot of sense, but no.. Leave it to scientists to ruin this thing too..

I don't believe there was any conspiracy to kill JFK. 

I do believe in aliens, and I believe they have visited here.  I actually have done quite a bit of reading about it, along with a special project in college.  (No, I didn't get laughed out of the room!)

I admit that I'm nowhere near as educated on the subject of JFK as I am on aliens.  But I know someone who was there and she is positive that Oswald did it, there were no other gunmen.  I usually don't buy into conspiracy theories anyway. 

magic bullet my friend. the zapruder video precisely shows that the body of JFk moves in 2 different directions.

1 hit from behind and one from the front. and there is also this bullet found in an abnormal place, and a part of the road curve that was hit by a shell ... too many wierd things .... but again... i dont wanna fall in this thing again. it ruined like 2 weeks of my life :)

now i'm in love with jackie and i'm glad her husband is dead, now she IS MINE !! ahaha!!! MIIIINNNE !! ....uh .... sorry. hum.

Funny how people still argues about WHO killed JFK when the real intresting thing is WHY he (and his brother) were killed...

Sorry to give such bad news, but you know she is dead, right?

When your family has ties to organized crime, and you use those ties to help get elected, and than you implement the RICO act............. ::)

Not a smart thing to do :nervous:

no, she is alive. she is in my basement.

I believe That the kennedies were killed by you and me  :D
And yes I believe in aliens, it's such a waste of time if they don't exist.

Are u Jessica in disguise?

U speak more rubbish than a talking crisp packet

She's positive it was a man hiding in a building she couldn't have possibly seen? ::) Her vision is so good she could see the bullet(s) in flight and track the angle they were fired from? - Oh yes, u get another rollye eyes smilie ::)

Damn, with people like your friend about no wonder the jury system is a joke.

I'm positive u shot JFK : ok:

First off, if you want to insult me, then leave me alone.  I've had a worse day and week than anyone here can possibly imagine and I'm not in the mood.  I don't know why you've decided to have a problem with me and I don't care.  But you can speak respectfully to me or don't speak to me at all.  I've never insulted you personally.

 To answer your point about my "friend" -  its more about the fact that no one doubted it at the time.  It was pretty clear what happened.  The conspiracy theories came along much later.  She finds it insulting to his memory all the nonsense people come up with, like the idea that Oswald wasn't capable.   

I can't argue her points, because I don't fully know her beliefs.  But she is a very intelligent person who spent more time dealing with the reality of what happened than any of us has. 

Why is it that no one likes to accept that one crazy person could be responsible for this?  I've seen the movie, by the way, and it wasn't a documentary.  It wasn't all fact, it was entertainment.  There's plenty of evidence to show Oswald did it, but that's not nearly as fun, is it?

Don't worry Starling, I am an alien myself.  : ok: There's no conspiraciy about it.
As to the JFK thingy, My guess is as good as yours. I lean to connys opinion on this one.

Those are two different matters.


Aw gee?a sacrilegious Necrophilia?.

I agree with Buggin', it was the damn CIA behind the Kennedy assasination. The angles from which the bullets were fired as well as the exit wounds do not match. Not to mention that Oswald was using one of the worst shoulder weapons ever manufactured, not even used since WW2. The Zapruder film (if youve seen it) documents the 3 shots being fired in approx. 2.6 seconds, which is impossible because the weapon Oswald supposedly used requires at least a second an half to recycle. Beyond that there are so many loose ends and mysteries behind the set up we could be hear all day, but point being if there is no conspiracy why the fuck cant we see those documents??? Oh yeah, your american government is corrupt and rather keep people from the truth, instead of educating those who want to learn about the last real Prez.

As for aliens, its ridiculous to not believe that there is in fact other living lifeforms out there. We are in fact sharing this universe with millions, or maybe trillions of other life forms its just a matter of implementing the technology to interact with such beings. They found water on Mars, and guess what..where theres water theres life!! Im sure you've all heard of Roswell, well if the government ever gets off their fat, corrupted arses youll have your proof. By the way how do any of you know that aliens arnt among us? Perhaps we cant see them due to our limited sensory perceptions or perhaps we cant because to many of us dont believe...

the truth is out there... :yes:

The mafia didnt kill JFK - you think they can influence the FBI/CIA to cover up the murder of the president -  i doubt it.
In my view the most likely people to have killed him are Cuban exiles wanting revenge after the bay of pigs - these were highly trained, highly motivated and highly dangerous men with strong  ties to the FBI/CIA. Its not suprising the CIA didnt want people to digging into the matter too much. The US president being killed by CIA backed, equiped, financed and trained Cubans wouldnt look too good.

There are so many forces behind the killing of JFK that we could never know for certain who did it or why.  All that I know is that the man who was arrested and known as Lee Harvey Oswald could not have done it.  Also, did you know there are approximately 40 different photographed identities linked to the name "Lee Harvey Oswald" between the years of 1939 and 1963?

As for aliens, I'm almost certain they exist and have visited earth.  And I think Dick Cheney is one of them.

U realised ur child is being taught by a man that refuses to display the flag :o


Its probably the nonsense u post in every thread...yep, i think thats it


How about showing me some respect and everyone else some respect by not writing rubbish all the time? I rather enjoy the sensible posts but find yours keep appearing in the middle of them


Get a clue - people AT THE TIME assumed it was either the mob (Kennedy's ''crack-down'' or the Vietnamese (Kennedy having ''allowed' a coup in South Vietnam 3 weeks earlier) - theories started immedietly


Yes - he'd been shot :hihi:


Wrong! And may i ask how much time u've spent reading about the topic?



Aww.... :'(

I'd say it was insulting to stick your head in the sand and pray the simplest explanation is always the right one.



Still hope for u then : ok:



Therefore her opinion is more sound than that of the thousands of people that have spent years studying the topic?



Having bene on this board for years now the capacity of crazy people for insane acts is more apparent than ever

I don't know who killed Kennedy but Kennedy had many enemies and justice is about finding the truth, not just accepting a theory. Oswald might be guilty but its not really going to do any harm taking a closer look



Well done, generally thats what movies are



Well depends on how much u enjoyed it :hihi:


Rather emotional about it all ain't ya?

If people want to spend time finding the truth why is that a bad thing? It could well be that Oswald is innocent and the real killer may still be walking our streets.

Never mention my child again, okay?? I realize I said that one thing that irritated you (heaven forbid a non-religous person has issues with someone who would place his religion above his country) but...



Like what?

Just because you don't like me or agree with me doesn't make my opinons rubbish.? You disagree with me about the dude with the flag.? GET OVER IT!?

I already said I've haven't done much reading on the subject of Kennedy.? I admit that.? But I know there are plenty of "experts" on both sides.? And not everything in the world is a conspiracy.?? For every expert who claims the bullet couldn't have done the damage, or the gun couldn't, or Oswald couldn't have fired the gun, there is another one who claims the opposite.?

We all know UFO's shot Kennedy - best lock the topic now  :hihi:

I have also read extensively on this subject as well.  As much as many want to believe there were other shooters, I believe there was one: Oswald.  The Zapruder film actually verifies this position when broken down.

I surely believe in UFOs. I don't think they ever came to Earth, but there has to be other forms of life out there in this universe or another. This is just logical. I think it would be crazy and self centered to think life couldn't exist anywhere else than on Earth. I just hope life somewhere else has been able to end up in something better than a religion/ money/ power driven society.

 :rofl:  I nearly spit water all over my screen reading this.

To go along with what was said that Oswald was believed to be the shooter, and other theories came along far later-- so what?  I guess the US really didn't know Pearl Harbor was about to be bombed despite all the papers released within the past 15 years that basically disproved that.  It was believed that no one knew about the attack before it was believed that we knew about it, so apparently we really must not have known it was coming.

Anyways, carry on.

I don't believe in aliens and UFOs. The CIA is more of an alien force than outerspace.
There may be creatures in other planets, but they may not be super intelligent like the movies claim.

Who shot JFK?

A selfish criminal.

But you do believe that Elvis is really alive, right?  ;)

Seriously, on the UFO thing- the details around the crash at Roswell are pretty interesting.  For example, when the wreckage was originally found it was identified by military personnel as a spacecraft.  Later they backtracked and claimed it was a weather balloon.  There are plenty of witnesses to the wreckage and none of them describe anything consistent with a weather balloon.  Its pretty obvious that they were hiding something, but that in itself doesn't prove it was aliens.  But there are plenty of other things that point to it.  Such as more than one death bed confession from the people who were there.  Also, under the freedom of information act, the government was forced to release some documents relating to Roswell, but they withheld and edited most of it due "national security" issues.  They continue to withhold records, nearly 60 years later.  So whether you believe it was aliens or not, something happened there that the government continues to cover up.  There's tons more information than I can possibly remember or type here, but its available to those who are interested. 

Sure he is. He's on a secret Island chillin' with the some hotties. :hihi:

I've heard a lot about Roswell over the years. I honestly don't know what to believe as far as that goes. It's too vague and speculative to really make an educated guess. That video of the surgeons operating on the injured/dead alien is interesting.

I dont believe in Aliens and There is no way in hell Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK by himself.

Ruby killed Oswald for a perfect CIA cover up.

I remember that, I think it was proved to be a hoax (the video, not Roswell - unsure what I think about the Roswell incident).

And who are you (U)? Prince?

I suggest you (U) stop the pointless attacks on posters in threads that doesn't even interest you (U). I mean, you're (U're) above everybody here anyway.....  ::)


/jarmo

The Marines killed Kennedy.  They trained Oswald and turned him into a killing machine and an expert marksman. 

It was you and me


I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the Gods they made
I shouted out, Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me
So let me please introduce myself
I?m a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached Bombay


There's you answer as for UFO's of course they are real hav'nt you seen Independence Day Men In Black War Of? The Worlds ETC? ::)

I saw a show on ABC about it - before Peter Jennings passed away.  There's one clip that had me laughing hysterically. They're showing what appears to be mysterious, spooky alien language symbols from the wreckage.  To the untrained eye, it looks alien indeed.  But to the (sadly) few people who have taken an electromagnetics course, they looked like antenna diagrams.  And they were drawn in the same way that a physicist in the pre-computer age would draw them with a Smith Chart.

So...after that I wasnt sure what to believe about the rest of the evidence.


I believe it was the coverup of something mundane and under-handed, namely, illegal spying activities using wireless cameras.  What was once state-of-the-art technology is now left for annoying popup windows (those X-10 camera ads).

I think Axl could be an alien. The real Axl was abducted by aliens in 1994 and replaced with some creature than can morph into different shapes. The real Axl is in a space jail somehwere, refusing to eat his dinner and throwing a temper tantrum.

There's a ton of good science and corresponding literature kicking around, but the following article just seemed fitting:

http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1745

(http://66.240.198.75/albums/celestial/adb.jpg)

SETI and the Cosmic Quarantine Hypothesis

Summary (Oct 17, 2005): How many technically advanced civilizations exist in our galaxy? With this essay by Steven Soter, Scientist-in-Residence in the Center for Ancient Studies at New York University, Astrobiology Magazine initiates the first in a series of 'Gedanken', or thought, experiments - musings by noted scientists on scientific mysteries in a series of "what if" scenarios.

With this essay by Steven Soter, Astrobiology Magazine presents the first in our series of 'Gedanken', or thought, experiments - musings by noted scientists on scientific mysteries in a series of "what if" scenarios. Gedanken experiments, which have been used for hundreds of years by scientists and philosophers to ponder thorny problems, rely on the power of one's imagination to project these scenarios to logical conclusions. They do not involve lab equipment or, often, even experimental data. They can be thought of as focused daydreams. Yet, as in the famous case of Einstein's Gedanken experiments about what it would be like to hitch a ride on a light wave, they have often led to important scientific breakthroughs.

Soter is Scientist-in-Residence in the Center for Ancient Studies at New York University, where he teaches a seminar on Scientific Thinking and Speculation, and a Research Associate in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History.

In this essay, Soter examines the Drake Equation, which asks how many technically advanced civilizations exist in our galaxy. He also looks at the Fermi Paradox, which questions why, if there are other technological civilizations nearby, we haven't heard from them.

---

If civilizations exist in our galaxy with levels of technology at least equal to our own, we might be able to detect some of them using radio telescopes. And if civilizations exist with technologies far in advance of our own, we might expect them to have colonized millions of habitable worlds in the Milky Way, and even to have visited our own planet. Yet there is no evidence in the astronomical, geological, archaeological, or historical records that extraterrestrial civilizations exist or that visitors from other worlds have ever been to Earth. Does that mean, as some have concluded, that ours is the only civilization in the galaxy? Or could there be a natural self-regulating mechanism that limits the intensive colonization of other worlds?

In 1961 radio astronomer Frank Drake devised an equation to express how the hypothetical number of observable civilizations in our galaxy should depend on a wide range of astronomical and biological factors, such as the number of habitable planets per star, and the fraction of inhabited worlds that give rise to intelligent life. The Drake Equation has led to serious studies and encouraged the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). It has also provoked ridicule and hostility. Novelist Michael Crichton recently denounced the equation as "literally meaningless," incapable of being tested, and therefore "not science." The Drake equation, he said, also opened the door to other forms of what he called "pernicious garbage" in the name of science, including the use of mathematical climate models to characterize global warming.

Crichton rightly pointed out that any numerical "answers" produced by the Drake Equation can be no more than guesses, since most of the terms in the equation are quantitatively unknown by many orders of magnitude. But he is utterly wrong to claim that the equation is "meaningless." An equation describes how the elements of a problem are logically related, whether or not we know their numerical values. Astronomers understand perfectly well that the Drake Equation cannot prove anything. Instead, we regard it as the most useful way to organize our ignorance of a difficult subject by breaking it down into manageable parts. This kind of analysis is standard, and a valued technique in scientific thinking. As new observations and insights emerge, the Drake Equation can be modified as needed or even replaced altogether. But it provides the necessary place to start.

When Drake first proposed his equation, we had no way to estimate any of its terms beyond the first one, representing the rate of star formation in our galaxy. Then in 1995, astronomers began to discover planets in orbits around other stars. These results now promise to sharpen our estimates for the second term in the equation, denoting the number of habitable worlds per star. Who knows what unforeseen discoveries will tell us about the other terms in the equation?

In Classical antiquity, when Aristarchus conceived the heliocentric view of the solar system and Democritus developed an atomic theory of matter, they had no possible way to test their ideas. The necessary observational tools and data would not exist for another two thousand years. Of course, the Crichtons of antiquity denounced such speculations as pernicious. But when the time finally came, the ancient ideas were still there, quietly waiting to inspire and encourage Copernicus and Galileo, and the pioneers of modern atomic theory, who took the first steps to test the theories. It may take centuries, but eventually the Drake Equation and all its elements will be testable.

We can express the Drake Equation in several ways, all of which are more or less equivalent. Here is one form:

N = Rs nh fl fi fc L

where N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy, expressed as the product of six factors: Rs is the rate of star formation, nh is the number of habitable worlds per star, fl is the fraction of habitable worlds on which life arises, fi is the fraction of inhabited worlds with intelligent life, fc is the fraction of intelligent life forms that produce civilizations, and L is the average lifetime of such civilizations.

The rate of star formation in our galaxy is roughly ten per year. We can define habitable worlds conservatively as those with liquid water on the surface. Many more worlds probably have liquid water only below the surface, but any subterranean life on such worlds would not be likely to produce an observable civilization. Recent discoveries of other planetary systems suggest that habitable worlds are common and that nh is at least one such planet in a hundred stars.

The remaining terms in the equation depend on the biology and social development of other worlds, and here we are profoundly ignorant. Our local experience may provide some guidance, however. We know that life on Earth arose almost as soon as conditions allowed - as soon as the crust cooled enough for liquid water to persist. This fact suggests that conditions for the origin of life on other habitable worlds are not restrictive, and that the value of fl is closer to one than to one in a thousand. But that is merely a guess. No one knows how life began on Earth, and we cannot generalize from a single case.

The conditions for intelligent life are probably more restrictive. On Earth this step first required the evolution of complex animals, which began about three billion years after the origin of life, and then the development of brains capable of abstract thought, which took another half billion years. Among the millions of animal species that have lived on Earth, probably only one ever had intelligence sufficient to understand the Drake Equation. This suggests that fi might be a small fraction.

The probability that intelligent life develops a civilization depends on the evolution of organs to manipulate the environment. On Earth, whales and dolphins may well have intelligence sufficient for abstract thought, but they lack the means to make tools. Humans, with dexterous hands, began making tools over a million years ago. Starting about ten thousand years ago, civilizations based on agriculture arose several times independently, in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Mexico, Peru, and New Guinea. This suggests that the value of fc is large, but again we should not generalize from the experience of only one intelligent and manipulative species.

We now come to the most intriguing term, the average lifetime L of a civilization. The Drake Equation assumes that, whatever the other factors, the number of civilizations presently in our galaxy is simply proportional to their average lifetime. The longer they live, the more civilizations exist at any given time. But what is the life expectancy of a civilization? On Earth, dozens of major civilizations have flourished and died within the last ten thousand years. Their average lifetime is about four centuries. Few if any civilizations on Earth have ever lasted as long as two thousand years.

History and archaeology show that the collapse of any given civilization causes only a temporary gap in the record of civilizations on Earth. Other civilizations eventually arise, either from the ruins of the collapsed one or independently and elsewhere. Those civilizations also eventually collapse, but new ones continue to emerge.

(cont'd)

For example, in the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Bronze Age, the prevailing Mycenaean civilization suffered widespread catastrophic collapse around 1100 BC. During a few centuries of "darkness" that followed, the population was illiterate, impoverished and relatively small -- but not extinct. Classical civilization gradually arose and flourished, and gave rise to the Roman Empire, which itself collapsed in the fifth century AD. Another period of impoverished Dark Ages followed, but eventually trade and literacy revived, leading to the Renaissance. Each revival of civilization was stimulated in part by the survival of relics from the past.

Our global technological civilization, with its roots in the Mediterranean Bronze Age, is now arguably headed for collapse. But that will not be the end of civilization on Earth -- not as long as the human species survives. And the biological lifetime of our species is likely to be several million years, even if we do our worst.

We should therefore distinguish between the longevity of a single occurrence of civilization and the aggregate lifetime of a sequence of civilizations. Almost all discussions of the Drake Equation have overlooked this distinction and therefore significantly underestimated L.

The proper value of L is not the average duration of a single episode of civilization on a planet, which for Earth is about 400 years. Rather, L is much larger, being the sum of recurrent episodes of civilization, and constitutes a substantial fraction of the biological lifetime of the intelligent species. The average species lifetime for mammals is a few million years. Suppose the human species lasts another million years and our descendants have recurrent episodes of civilization for more than 10 percent of that time. Then the average effective lifetime of civilization on Earth will exceed 100,000 years, or 250 times the duration of a single episode. Other factors being the same, this generally neglected consideration should increase the expected number of civilizations in our galaxy by at least a hundredfold.

While the aggregate lifetime of civilization on a planet may be only a hundred thousand years, we should allow the possibility that a small minority of intelligent life forms, say one in a thousand, has managed to use their intelligence and technology to survive for stellar evolutionary timescales -- that is, on the order of a billion years. In that case, the average effective lifetime of civilizations in our galaxy would be about a million years.

If we now insert numbers in the Drake Equation that represent the wide range of plausible estimates for the various terms, we find that the number N of civilizations in our galaxy could range anywhere from a few thousand to about one in ten thousand. The latter (pessimistic) case is equivalent to finding no more than one civilization in ten thousand galaxies, so that ours would be the only one in the Milky Way. In the former (optimistic) case, the nearest civilization might be close enough for us to detect its radio signals. Estimates for N thus range all over the map. While this exasperates critics who demand concrete answers from science, it does not invalidate the conceptual power of the Drake Equation.

If many civilizations have arisen in our galaxy, we might expect that some of them sent out colonies, and some of those colonies sent out still more colonies. The resulting waves of colonization would have spread out across the Milky Way in a time less than the age of our galaxy. So where are all those alien civilizations? Why haven't we seen them? The physicist Enrico Fermi first posed the question in 1950. Many answers have since been proposed, including (1) ours is the first and only civilization to arise in the Milky Way, (2) the aliens exist but are hiding, and (3) they have already been here and we are their descendants. In his book Where is Everybody? Stephen Webb considers fifty proposed solutions to the so-called "Fermi Paradox" but he leaves out the most thought-provoking explanation of all, one that I call the Cosmic Quarantine Hypothesis.

In 1981, cosmologist Edward Harrison suggested a powerful self-regulating mechanism that would neatly resolve the paradox. Any civilization bent on the intensive colonization of other worlds would be driven by an expansive territorial impulse. But such an aggressive nature would be unstable in combination with the immense technological powers required for interstellar travel. Such a civilization would self-destruct long before it could reach for the stars.

The unrestrained territorial drive that served biological evolution so well for millions of years becomes a severe liability for a species once it acquires powers more than sufficient for its self-destruction. The Milky Way may well contain civilizations more advanced than ours, but they must have passed through a filter of natural selection that eliminates, by war or other self-inflicted environmental catastrophes, those civilizations driven by aggressive expansion. That is, the acquisition of powerful technology ultimately selects for wisdom.

However, suppose an alien civilization somehow finds a way to launch the aggressive colonization of other planetary systems while avoiding self-destruction. It would only take one such case, and our galaxy would have been overrun by the reproducing colonies of the civilization. But Harrison proposed a plausible backup mechanism that comes into play in the event that the self-regulating control mechanism fails. The most evolved civilizations in the galaxy, he suggested, would notice any upstart world that showed signs of launching a campaign of galactic conquest, and they would nip it in the bud. Advanced intelligence might regard any prospect of the exponential diffusion throughout the Milky Way of self-replicating colonies very much as we regard the outbreak of a deadly viral epidemic. They would have good reason, and presumably the ability, to suppress it as a measure of galactic hygiene.

There may be many highly evolved civilizations in our galaxy, and some of them may even be the interstellar colonies of others. They may control technologies vastly more powerful than ours, applied to purposes we can scarcely imagine. But Harrison's regulatory mechanisms should preclude any relentless wave of colonization from overrunning and cannibalizing the Milky Way.

By most appearances, the dominant civilization on our planet is of the expansive territorial type, and is thus headed for self-destruction. Only if we can intelligently regulate our growth-obsessed and self-destructive tendencies is our civilization likely to survive long enough to achieve interstellar communication.

---

Steven Soter is Scientist-in-Residence in the Center for Ancient Studies at New York University, where he teaches a seminar on Scientific Thinking and Speculation, and a Research Associate in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History.

Empty-Sea (it's actually emsy-tee, but that way sounds better), with the long words of [others], you may have killed the thread.

Quite a barrier for some people.

Well if it's dead at least it went out on a high note.

Empty-Sea...feels better too...I like it.

Allegorical Al asks:

"What is tongue-in-cheek?"

Victor shot JFK. And other life forms do exist