From: ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de   
      
   "s|b"  wrote or quoted:   
   >On 12 Jan 2026 19:50:05 GMT, Ted Nolan  wrote:   
   >> Haven't read him, but I had always assumed he was a guy who had found a   
   >> grift and was milking it.  So he actually believed this stuff?   
   >You can't deny he saw things in a different perspective.   
      
     He added something useful to the whole discussion and helped   
     clear things up a bit. Kind of like a lawyer in court, he took   
     one side of the argument, but there were others covering it   
     from different angles, so the question ended up getting looked   
     at from several directions.   
      
     Belief in the paranormal and in extraterrestrials was indeed   
     more widespread and publicly respectable in some expert and   
     elite circles in the 1960s-1970s than it tends to be among   
     comparable experts today. The Parapsychological Association, for   
     example, became affiliated with the American Association for the   
     Advancement of Science in 1969, parts of the U.S. intelligence   
     community pursued classified programs exploring parapsychology.   
      
     When I was a kid, I thought all that stuff about "non-normal" things   
     was fascinating. I used to grab books from the local library with   
     "true stories" about people who saw ghosts, moved stuff with their   
     minds, or had telepathic experiences - and of course, Däniken, too.   
      
     Now I figure even the so-called normal world is already unbelievably   
     wild.   
      
     The writer in "Stalker" talks about how soul-crushing normal life   
     can get. People are starving for a way out:   
      
   |Writer: Don't hope for flying saucers - that would be far too   
   |interesting.   
   |   
   |Young woman: Not the Bermuda Triangle either? Surely you're   
   |not going to deny that . . .   
   |   
   |Writer: Oh yes, I deny it. Not in the Bermudas, nor anywhere   
   |else. There is a triangle A-B-C that is congruent with the   
   |triangle A1-B1-C1. Do you feel how much dreary boredom there   
   |is in that statement? In the Middle Ages, that was still a   
   |cause for excitement. Every house had its household spirit.   
   |Every church had God. People were young then. But today every   
   |fourth person is an old man. Boring, my dear. That's what   
   |boredom is.   
   |   
   Stalker, USSR, 1980. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)