Abductions: Clearing Out the Vermin

"The Pelican"

Magonia 83, December 2003

 

The Pelican invites you to imagine that one day you become aware that your house is infested with rats. You cannot think of a safe and efficient method of getting rid of them yourself so you call in a keen amateur vermin expert. The expert has a look around and says you haven't got rats, but mice. He knows other people who also have problems with mice and they have formed a support group which holds regular meetings. These people assure one another that they are not alone with their problems and that they can learn to live with their vermin.

Ufoology: As Much Fun as a Barrelful of Aliens

Matt Graeber
Magonia 83, December 2003

About ten years ago, I coined the term “ufoology” in a letter to Jim Moseley, who is the publisher and editor of the USA’s longest-running newsletter on the UFO enigma. Jim’s Saucer Smear is legendary as a gossip and scandal sheet that has been exposing the intellectual short-comings and indiscretions of the self-appointed UFO experts, some of their “star-witnesses” and, of course, the UFO group leaders that have endorsed the rantings of these individuals.

The History Man: Wittgenstein's Lion and the Stories of Roswell

Peter Brookesmith

Magonia 83, December 2003

 

Somewhere in Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein remarks that if a lion could speak, we would not understand him. As I understand the text, Wittgenstein meant that a lion's view of the world is so utterly different from our own that, even given a mutually accessible medium of communication, such as what human beings would call a language, we would not understand what lions were trying to say in it.