Blog Archives

Review of Unexplained + Unexplored S01E08: "Finding the Fountain of Youth"

12/30/2019

Note: I will be taking off for the holiday and will post again after New Year’s Day.

The Fountain of Youth is a romantic legend, but not one that should readily have been associated with Florida. Herodotus offers us the oldest recorded story of the Fountain of Youth, a tale that the king of “Ethiopia” (the land south of Egypt) supposedly told to the Fish-Eaters to explain how they lived for 120 years: “When the Ichthyophagi showed wonder at the number of the years, he led them to a fountain, wherein when they had washed, they found their flesh all glossy and sleek, as if they had bathed in oil- and a scent came from the spring like that of violets. The water was so weak, they said, that nothing would float in it, neither wood, nor any lighter substance, but all went to the bottom. If the account of this fountain be true, it would be their constant use of the water from it which makes them so long-lived” (Histories 3.23, trans. Macaulay). The story reappears in the Alexander Romance, the tales of Prester John, and elsewhere.

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The Year in Review: 2019 in Pseudohistory, Space Aliens, and Conspiracy Theories

12/28/2019

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Perhaps more than any year in recent memory, 2019 was the year in which fringe history stopped being fringe and went completely mainstream. This year, we saw pseudohistory and conspiracy theories top the literary bestseller lists, multiply across cable channels like mushrooms on a rotten log, and attract record crowds to traveling carnivals masquerading as pseudohistory “fan” conventions. It perfectly captures the tenor of the times for the post-truth era that the very notions of fact and fiction ceased to have meaning. This was a long, hard year, both for the world and also for me personally. After dealing with family health problems, buying and selling a house (and still not being able to close on selling the old one until early 2020, nearly half a year after the sale), writing two books, and a knot of lawyers for many different developments, I am ready for this unpleasant year to end. Let’s look back in anger:

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Review of Unexplained + Unexplored S01E07: "Egypt's Land of the Gods"

12/23/2019

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Note: I am taking time off for the Christmas holiday, so this will be my last post until this weekend.

I will give Unexplained + Unexplored credit for finally breaking out of the America Unearthed mold in episode 7, traveling to Egypt and Ethiopia in search of what they term a “lost civilization” that gave rise to ancient Egypt. Sadly, though, they do so only because they are following a different playbook: Graham Hancock and those in his orbit, such as Robert Schoch, John Anthony West, and Robert Bauval. Following Hancock’s lead, hosts Justin “Baron Ambrosia” Fornal and Emiliano Ruprah claim that ancient Egypt “seemingly rises out of nowhere” and that its development has “baffled” archaeologists. This is, of course, not true. Preceding cultures, particularly the Naqada II and Naqada III cultures that immediately preceded dynastic Egypt, are well-known, and in them we find the elements that gave rise to dynastic Egypt. Early archaeologists thought of Egypt as emerging all at once and fully formed because these prehistoric cultures had not yet been excavated and explored, but that was a century or more ago.

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Jacques Vallée Claims to Have Proof CIA Faked Alien Abductions as "Psychological Warfare," Refuses to Let Anyone See It

12/21/2019

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A few months ago, Jacques Vallée, the longtime UFO researcher and scientific advisor to space-demon-hunting billionaire Robert Bigelow, published the fourth volume of his diaries, Forbidden Science, covering the 1990s. In that book, Vallée made the shocking allegation that the CIA staged fake alien abductions in Latin America and that there were documents that supported the allegation: “I have secured a document confirming that the CIA simulated UFO abductions in Latin America (Brazil and Argentina) as psychological warfare experiments.” Vallée did not provide support for the dramatic assertion in Forbidden Science, which prompted Jack Brewer of The UFO Trail blog to ask him for his evidence. The answer was… exactly what you’d expect: a mixture of arrogance, incuriosity, and buck-passing in place of actual proof.

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Nothing New Today Due to Book Work

12/20/2019

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My publisher has delivered to me a reader report and a set of notes for revisions and changes to my book on legends of the pyramids. Based on the manuscript, they would like to revise parts of the book into a more visual organization. They would like to see a revised chapter right after New Year's. I will be taking some time off during the holiday weeks to work on the revisions.

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TV in Brief: "Runaways," "V Wars," and "Nobody's Looking"

12/19/2019

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Before we begin today, I am pleased to report that Unexplained + Unexplored hit a series low on Sunday for its episode hunting for Maya in Florida, attracting only 283,000 live plus same day viewers, according to Nielson’s fast national ratings. On the other hand, it’s also a sad commentary on TV viewers that almost half the show’s audience tuned out the first time it explored a topic that wasn’t about white people. Episodes focusing on biblical, early Euro-American, or Eurocentric conspiracies had anywhere from 50% to 80% more viewers that the show’s one venture into non-white history. Let’s hope that the declining ratings consign this abomination of a “history” show to cancellation hell.

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Steven Greer Implies Defense Department Bribed Garry Nolan to Falsify Atacama "Alien" Report with $3.2 Million Grant

12/18/2019

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In a new YouTube video made up of clips of a speech given by ufologist Steven Greer and outtakes from his various media products, Greer makes a number of extreme claims about the miscarried human fetus known in UFO circles as the “Atacama Humanoid” and falsely believed to be an alien. These include allegations that the dead fetus is part of a race of alien-like small creatures that currently live in Chile and that a vast conspiracy has pressured credulous scientist Dr. Garry P. Nolan into falsifying his investigation into the body, which concluded that it was human. Greer has attacked Nolan and his research into the Atacama fetus for years now, often using similar or more extreme language.

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Review of Unexplained + Unexplored S01E06 "Mystery of the American Maya"

12/16/2019

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Every episode of Unexplained + Unexplored remakes an episode of America Unearthed, for reasons known only to the Discovery Networks and the production companies they pay to remake bad shows time after time. This episode stretches all the way back to the pilot episode of America Unearthed, in which Scott. F. Wolter attempted to find evidence that the Maya colonized the southern United States. Here, our hosts, Justin “Baron Ambrosia” Fornal and Emiliano Ruprah, follow his footsteps in taking a potentially interesting question and turning it into a colonialist-style treasure hunt. I will give them credit, though, for not simply repeating America Unearthed uncritically and instead finding their own, slightly less ridiculous, evidence for American Maya.

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Help Support This Website with Your Generous Contribution

12/14/2019

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Yes, it’s that time of the year again! Every Christmas season, I follow the lead of NPR, PBS, and the charity of your choice and ask my readers to help with the upkeep of this site and to help keep it commercial and ad-free. In the interest of saving some time, I am adapting my pitch from previous years for this post.

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No Blog Today Due to Paperwork

12/13/2019

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You know it is going to be one of those days when you get told that your lawyer is calling and you have to ask which lawyer, and for what reason. I ran out of time for writing a blog post because I spent the day dealing with legal issues. Part of the day was spent trying to finalize the sale of my former house, whose closing has been delayed for weeks while the purchaser's bank dragged its feet. With the paperwork on that finally moving forward for a closing before the end of the year, I had to simultaneously deal with another situation arising from claims made years ago against this blog. My attorney and I had to discuss our response to a request to remove content from this blog. The issue is still ongoing, and I cannot provide additional details while the matter is active.

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