It didn’t take long for interest in the Denver space alien video to mushroom into both a media an Internet frenzy —and today— we’re no closer to know exactly WHAT it was that was photographed in a window late one night…

Let’s try and out it in perspective…

Last week, we told you of a Denver man who was calling on that city to set up an alien affairs commission.

To buttress his point, Jeff Peckman showed a video purporting to be an alien looking through a window.

He prohibited the media from copying the clip—saying it was part of a documentary to which he didn’t own the rights……

Within hours of Peckman’s news conference—a number of versions of THIS video surfaced on the web—purporting to be that clip..

Turns out—that ain’t the REAL alien in the window video.. It’s actually the work of an alien debunker—who whipped it up in a few hours to show how anyone could “create” a space alien.

The “real” video of the purported alien has yet to be seen by the public—but this still photo from the video has made it out…

We’ve tried to enhance it as much as our limited technology here sat this blog would allow…

Turns out the this still was taken from a video made by a fellow by the name of Stan Romanek, who according to his website here, supports the Denver extraterrestrial initiative…

Seems Romanek claims to have over 100 UFO encounters.

He made the videotape a few years ago with an infra-red camera to catch what he thought was a Peeping-Tom checking out his teen-aged daughters at night. Instead he caught what he says is a creature from elsewhere.

Romanek’s website calls his experiences ”The world’s most documented extraterrestrial contact story.”

Was his hook-up with Peckman a way to achieve more documentation of his tales—or a cheap trick to pre-sell his upcoming documentary?

I’d suspect only two people know for sure.

Stan Romanek—and whoever was looking in his bedroom window.

—Steve

Click on this map to see details on where readers are located

KudoSurf Me!

Blog Information Profile for instanteye

Add to: | blinklist | del.cio.us | digg | yahoo! | furl | rawsugar | shadows | netvouz

Through out my career as a journalist—I’ve always been guided by my own instincts and judgement about trends, stories, and what people want to read in the paper, hear on the radio, see on TV, or scan in my blog…

But now—I’m on the brink of being replaced by intelligences far greater than my own—I’m about to be replaced by my software…

EXTRA, EXTRA, BREED ALL ABOUT IT….

A couple of techies from M.I.T. have come up with software that uses a form or artificial intelligence “to alter colors, fonts and hyperlinks of pages in response to what seems to grab the attention of the people who click on the site.”

They say the sites actually evolve through breeding.

As you can read here it develops pages that update quicker than a human could create and change them—adding new material all the time to satisfy readers.

Hey—I’m all for it.. Soon, all I’ll have to do is just type in a subject, sign my name to the blog,and let my software write the whole darn thing!

NOT TONIGHT HONEY, I’VE GOT A LOW BATTERY….

Web pages aren’t the only artificial things that are breeding…

The author of a new book says humans and robots will soon be breeding too…

This isn’t the first time David Levy has broached this subject.

Last October we told you about how he wrote a research paper talking about how trends indicated humans and robots might marry in the near future.

Now, in his book, he says with-in five years, humans will be having sex with robots—whether we marry ‘em or not.

He sees nothing unusual in this saying:

” artificial devices have been used for sex for many centuries, so there is nothing intrinsically implausible about the idea that humans may want to engage in sexual acts with robots.”

You can read more about it here… But It’s got me wondering, what happens if my robot spouse/lover decides I’m spending too much time with the toaster or lawn mower?

Could make for a messy divorce…

I mean—who gets custody of the extension cords? ….

HEY, THAT ROBOT HAS A KILLER SMILE….

And, If you got your robot mad enough at you—maybe it wouldn’t bother with divorce.

Maybe it’d just terminate you!

One British Artificial Intelligence scientist is worried that killer robots could be a threat to humanity.

Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield says robots used in military applications are getting more and more autonomous… And as they gain intelligence and sophistication, they could run amok and begin banding together to wipe out those pesky humans.

You can read more of his fears here—where he goes into greater detail about his concern.

Sharkey thinks we ought to ban autonomous weapons systems—before they ban us…

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.

In the meantime—I’m just hoping my automated web page doesn’t tell my robotic wife what sites I’ve been looking at on the Internet !

—Steve

Link to video & story Steve covered today on NBC-17

Blog Information Profile for instanteye

Add to: | blinklist | del.cio.us | digg | yahoo! | furl | rawsugar | shadows | netvouz

Now, here’s another helping of the stew that’s got lots of tidbits for you….

RED IN THE FACE PHONE….

Hillary’s recent “Red Phone AD” is being viewed by pundits as one of the reasons why she gained voters in Texas And Ohio… They say she was able to define Barack Obama as the person you wouldn’t want answering the White House Phone at 3-am during an international crisis…

Now—it turns out—the ad’s created some ironic blowback…

Seems one of the child actors in the ad was an Obama precinct captain during the Washington State Caucus—and has been working for Obama for some time…

You see, the “child” portrayed in the ad isn’t a little kid anymore…

The video of Casey Knowles was shot almost a decade ago—and is stock footage owned by a company called Getty Images… Hillary’s ad team bought the footage to create its commercial…

Here’s her story…. 

She says she’d like for her and Obama to do a counter ad.. You’ve gotta wonder if that idea isn’t being tossed around right now in some media strategy session…

EVERYTHING NEW IS OLD….

The “Red Phone” ad isn’t new to Hillary’s campaign—it’s just a reworking of an old concept.

Back when Walter Mondale was trying to overcome Senator Gary Hart, Mondale’s campaign tried the old  “who do you want answering the phone”  ad…

The Mondale ad was created by Roy Spence to use in the 1984 Texas primary… Spence is now advising Hillary’s Campaign.

TWISTED THINKING…

Hillary has spent a lot of time on who is best prepared to lead the country—touting her experience with dealing with World Leaders… But, during the last debate—she had a bit of trouble trying to spit out the name of Russia’s new leader, Dimitry Medvedev…

True, the name is a mouthful…

Good thing she wasn’t asked to read the script of this tongue-twisting cartoon about a shoe company called the Kicky Sack Socko Sack Kicker …

I’d  LOVE to hear the outtakes from THAT recording session! 

~~~~~~~

It Doesn’t Add Up..

Some of our readers have noticed the discrepancies between the Blog Stats in the sidebar at the right and the “Live” On-line map at the bottom of the blog…

Here’s the explanation..

We started this blog on Sept 25, 2007—but didn’t have the software to track readers installed till November 5th… Those are the stasts you see at the right.

The “LIVE MAP” was added in December 2007—and in addition to showing how many folks are on line, it tracks how many people and from which countries they come.

So, it’s “Total Viewed” stats are about 3 months behind…

Confused? Well, that’s the best I can do, because math was never my best subject.

—Steve

TV news—in its present form—is in trouble.

Oh, it’s not that we’re doing bad things—but rather that we’re becoming less relevant to our audience..

A recent Zogby poll indicates two-thirds of Americans—a whopping 67%–think traditional journalism is out of touch with their lives.

You can read the details here—which includes the fact that just about half the people surveyed get most of their news from the Internet.

WIRE YOU STILL WATCHING TV ….

The new media certainly have an advantage over traditional TV in that—in its simplest form—all it takes to get a news clip on-line is your own video camera, an Internet connection—and you’ve got a world-wide audience.

Compare that to how a traditional TV news broadcast gets on the air.

This clip is from the mid-70’s, and although some of the technology is dated—the same effort and vast numbers of people are still involved in producing what amounts to brief bits of news content…

WHAT THE ZELL….

The new owner of one of the largest media conglomerates in the country is one of those folks who thinks the traditional Media are out of touch.

Real Estate tycoon Sam Zell—who purchased the Tribune company—has told his employees the journalism they are practicing doesn’t give readers and viewers what they want.

Zell has also tried to explain to his employees they have a stake in the new company—which apparently befuddled one poor, misguided staffer at the Tribune company’s WGN in Chicago…

TOON IN YOUR TV ….

Back in the 50’s when TV’s popularity boomed—and it was still going through it’s technological growing pains of poor reception and limited program availability—cartoon director Tex Avery tried to envision what TV would be like in the decades to come…

So where is TV headed in the next few years?

You tell me… TALK BACK here.

But do it here, on the Internet, please—so LOTS of folks can join in.

—Steve

Link to video & story Steve covered today on NBC-17

There are some tasty tid-bits being served up on the campaign trail—and in the coverage of the presidential race—so let’s dig right in…

MeSsupNBC…

The severely ratings-challenged cable network that’s making it a practice to have to apologize for things it does and says is at it again.

MSNBC has once again had to say “I’m Sorry” ..

This time, it was to Barack Obama…

Seems the folks who put things together at that operation don’t know Obama from Osama… The other night on Chris Matthews Hardball program he was talking about BARACK—but the graphic showed OSAMA…

Chris Matthews later apologized for the error.

It’s the second time he’s had to do that on air. Last month he apologized to Hillary for suggesting Bill’s infidelities had made her prominent…

And MSNBC’s David Schuster apologized and was suspended for remarks he made saying Hillary’s campaign had “pimped out” daughter Chelsea..

I don’t know how MSNBC’s viewers have reacted to all this.

Perhaps we should call all 8 of them and ask…

IT’S HARD TO CONCEDE WHEN YOU’RE CONCEITED…

After the Wisconsin results came in—it was the 9th consecutive time that Barack Obama won a contest—and was NOT congratulated publicly by his opponent.

In keeping with her past performances following Obama victories in Washington, Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska , U.S. Virgin Islands, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia—Hillary failed to concede.

You can read here about how more and more folks are noticing her pettiness and lack of common protocol in the race for the democratic nomination.

The Obama campaign says she did make a private call to him after Wisconsin—but you have to wonder about the character of someone who can’t be a gracious loser.

If all of MSNBC can repeatedly tell Hillary they’re sorry—how difficult is it for her to publicly acknowledge that her opponent fought the good fight?

DO THE MATH…

Here’s a quick equation for you:

1191-942>245=up

The 1,191 is how many delegates John McCain needs to clinch the GOP nomination. The 942 is how many he has now.

The 245 is how many delegates Mike Huckabee has in his column.

They equal “up” as in, “your number’s up Mike.”

—Steve

 Link to video & story Steve covered today on NBC-17