Have you ever found yourself, trying to explain your theory on the mole
people or some other paranormal topic to a new friend or coworker? Have
you ever been greeted with skepticism and the "he might be crazy look?"
I have. In fact I was greeted with it not once, not twice, but three
times this week.

So why was met with such skepticism? Was it the topic of abduction? I
don't think so. Was it the words I used to articulate my views?
Probably. One thing I have learned in my years of being open to things
beyond Starbucks and the box we are expected to live within, is that the
saying, "it's not what you say, but how you say it" is true. If you get
the chance email me your experiences with the skeptics, how did you
handle it?

Speaking of abduction, the Fourth Kind is out and I am looking forward to
meeting it with my own kind of skepticism this Friday. Keep your
spoilers out of my inbox :-). Those that may not know The Fourth Kind is
an abduction film that takes place in a very remote Alaskan town. No
soccer moms or minivans in these parts, just Milla Jovovich and a bunch
of really cold abductees. Apparently there is some fact to this film,
but ill avoid looking into that and exploring that, until after I have
seen the movie.

Greg

On a previous episode of The Parafactor we covered a story about robots that were being designed to perform scientific experiments that would allow them to reason for themselves. This sort of spontaneous intelligence could be
a blessing or a curse. If executed correctly we might be able
to get definitive proof that life either does or did exist on other planets, utilizing the resilience and longevity of thinking machines for prolonged space travel. We might be able to help the severely handicapped through programmed “super providers”; nannies and caregivers that always remember to administer medication, and that never need to sleep.

So let's say that they will be used for good. They have the capacity to
store as much information as their hard drive will hold, and if it gets
full you can always upgrade it or even have the unit itself switch out its own hard drives when need be. This will give them countless different scenarios to run
through where each scenario can be sorted, logged and utilized for reference. We can program thinking machies to sort
through different drugs and find the correct combination of medicines to
cure diseases. We can run situational computations based on our fossil fuel resources to help move away from our reliance on oil. If these are the goals
that we are working towards, then I am all for it.

There is, on the other hand, that whole becoming self aware thing where machines see the apparent aberrations in mankind and start to develop their own contingency plans to deal with it. How will we be able to damage them at all when the scientists/mechanics that built them have built them to survive in the harshest environments on other worlds? The very design that enables their functionality could very spell our ruin. And how long until that functionality is recognized for its hidden resource and the production is moved towards alternative applications.

Let's look at the alternative now; metal killing machines. Is it all that farfetched to think the government will send robots into war against other countries? We see it as an element of blockbuster science fiction, but is it really all that unthinkable? Remember that drone technology is currently siphoning off some major defense dollars. If they do end up going this route, will they be able to differentiate between friends and enemies. Their enemies could be of any race, creed, or
class and the robots will need a way to determine who to shoot. If there is
a malfunction it could turn into a bloodbath for the wrong side, so they
will need to be not only to be intelligent, but also somewhat aware; an astute awareness that goes far beyond our current not-so-successful facial recognition attempts and move into musculature of the face and even potential phoneme recognition and predictive facial feature recognition based on certain dialects. Sounds a little like ethnic profiling doesn’t it? And we haven’t even the time to look at the social implications. Let’s just refer back to Asimov and move on.


When they become aware of the world around them, they will shortly then become “self-aware”. It’s a more term we apply more to Cyberdine Industries, but pop cultural references aside, it is the turning point that we all fear. If they become self aware, they may realize that they are being used as killing
machines and that self awareness may turn from quizzical to philosophical to pragmatic in just a few beats of the war drum. There is a fine line between patriotism and sadism, and personality often drives the latter. Sure,
we think Data from Star Trek was cool, but they won't be him.. It could be Cyberdine’s Skynet, and it wouldn't be pretty.
It has already happened once
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/11/us_war_robot_rebellion_iraq/
in the S.W.O.R.D.S. project (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance
Direct-action System). Luckily nobody was hurt this time. So what do you
do when you try it once and it doesn't work? The only logical answer is
to try, try again. This time
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/09/transformer_robot_can_transform
_into_a_robot/ , they're making transformers as part of a project
called M.A.A.R.S. (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System). What will
happen next?

Mark

Just recently we were fortunate enough to interview Jason Offutt concerning all of the reports he has collected on the subject of shadow people. The idea of shadow people is one that tends to divide the paranormal community over those who feel that pre-internet reports of shadow people were labeled under different monickers and that the phenomena itself has been around far longer than the advent of the web, and those that feel that the phenomena itself is a web generated, or more aptly put, web propagated experience. Regardless of it's origins, reports never cease to make their way across his desk, or as in this story, into our inbox.

Considering that my own humble beginnings started in the midwest I will occasionally ask for , and receive, stories from that region. Below is a recent email received shortly after the Jason Offutt broadcast:

"I live in a Large Two Story house in Illinois with my husband and three children. There has been a lot of personal turmoil in the last few years and we have all been through some troubled times. About a year ago I kept feeling that I was being watched especially when I was alone and the kids were in school. I would see something out of the corner of my eye but, being someone that does not follow any super natural experiences or who even watches those kind of shows, I decided that I was just imagining that I saw something. This was happening quite often and then we had Thanksgiving last year and after we sat down my mother's eyes got big and by her expression I just knew that she had seen something. I looked at her and said, "Mom what is wrong?", and before she spoke I said "let's talk about it after dinner". When we were alone in the kitchen she said that she saw two dark figures walk from the foyer and move towards the stairs. My mom is very interested in the Paranormal and told me that she thought that what we saw were shadow people. Things had been fairly quiet this past summer but now I have a teenage son that is having problems in school and he has started to see these beings as well. At first he would just act funny and say that nothing was wrong but now he has confided in me about what he sees. He is another non believer and for him to be upset I believe he is truly seeing them. I also have two dogs and several times I see them cock their heads and bark and absolutely nothing. I have heard that animals are very sensitive to this so maybe they see something also."

The idea that emotional turmoil has an impact on supernatural phenomena is not a new one. In many poltergeist cases, there is usually a child entering puberty or working through a broken marriage or move that becomes a central figure in the phenomena. This is also the case in instances of demonic possession.

I was able to contact the family and soon realized I had stumbled onto something that exceeded their original story. When asked if the family had experienced anything preceding these events the mother said no, then followed with, "Well, my youngest used to have imaginary friends,but I don't see where that has anything to do with this." I pressed a little further and she revealed that immediately following her divorce with her previous husband her youngest son began to tell stories of two children who would play with him late at night when everyone would go to sleep. Her son also remarked on the appearance of the children. Both children were apparently wearing what he called "short pants". His mother had, at first believed this to just be his own jargon for shorts or even boxers. Upon seeing an antique picture, however, the boy pointed to the style of dress and exclaimed, "Short pants!".

Of particular interest to me is the fact that both phenomena started after a traumatic event in the "children's lives". Being that much poltergeist activity deals with a physical interaction of the entity and its immediate surroundings, my line of inquiry migrated to the child's toys and was met with a short story revolving around the placement toys in the room always being disturbed after the child's late night play sessions. Many toys were also displaced never to be found again.

My question now has to be whether we are seeing a troubled adolescence as a gateway phenomena or simply as fuel allowing entities to manifest themselves after leaching off of the child's distress. Hopefully with the growing number of shadow people cases that bloggers like Offutt are collecting we will see the correlation between these two phenomena and gain greater awareness of its origins.