Some Interesting Facts About Olympic Games

Monday, April 7, 2008

The Official Olympic Flag

Created by Pierre de Coubertin in 1914, the Olympic flag contains five interconnected rings on a white background. The five rings symbolize the five significant continents and are interconnected to symbolize the friendship to be gained from these international competitions. The rings, from left to right, are blue, yellow, black, green, and red. The colors were chosen because at least one of them appeared on the flag of every country in the world. The Olympic flag was first flown during the 1920 Olympic Games.

The Olympic Motto
In 1921, Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, borrowed a Latin phrase from his friend, Father Henri Didon, for the Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius ("Swifter, Higher, Stronger").

The Olympic Oath
Pierre de Coubertin wrote an oath for the athletes to recite at each Olympic Games. During the opening ceremonies, one athlete recites the oath on behalf of all the athletes. The Olympic oath was first taken during the 1920 Olympic Games by Belgian fencer Victor Boin. The Olympic Oath states, "In the name of all competitors, I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules that govern them, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honor of our teams."

The Olympic Creed
Pierre de Coubertin got the idea for this phrase from a speech given by Bishop Ethelbert Talbot at a service for Olympic champions during the 1908 Olympic Games. The Olympic Creed reads: "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."

The Olympic Flame
The Olympic flame is a practice continued from the ancient Olympic Games. In Olympia (Greece), a flame was ignited by the sun and then kept burning until the closing of the Olympic Games. The flame first appeared in the modern Olympics at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. The flame itself represents a number of things, including purity and the endeavor for perfection. In 1936, the chairman of the organizing committee for the 1936 Olympic Games, Carl Diem, suggested what is now the modern Olympic Torch relay. The Olympic flame is lit at the ancient site of Olympia by women wearing ancient-style robes and using a curved mirror and the sun. The Olympic Torch is then passed from runner to runner from the ancient site of Olympia to the Olympic stadium in the hosting city. The flame is then kept alight until the Games have concluded. The Olympic Torch relay represents a continuation from the ancient Olympic Games to the modern Olympics.

The Olympic Hymn
The Olympic Hymn, played when the Olympic Flag is raised, was composed by Spyros Samaras and the words added by Kostis Palamas. The Olympic Hymn was first played at the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens but wasn't declared the official hymn by the IOC until 1957.

Real Gold Medals
The last Olympic gold medals that were made entirely out of gold were awarded in 1912.

The Medals
The Olympic medals are designed especially for each individual Olympic Games by the host city's organizing committee. Each medal must be at least three millimeters thick and 60 millimeters in diameter. Also, the gold and silver Olympic medals must be made out of 92.5 percent silver, with the gold medal covered in six grams of gold.

The First Opening Ceremonies
The first opening ceremonies were held during the 1908 Olympic Games in London.

Opening Ceremony Procession Order
During the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, the procession of athletes is always led by the Greek team, followed by all the other teams in alphabetical order (in the language of the hosting country), except for the last team which is always the team of the hosting country.

A City, Not a Country
When choosing locations for the Olympic Games, the IOC specifically gives the honor of holding the Games to a city rather than a country.

IOC Diplomats
In order to make the IOC an independent organization, the members of the IOC are not considered diplomats from their countries to the IOC, but rather are diplomats from the IOC to their respective countries.

First Modern Champion
James B. Connolly (United States), winner of the hop, step, and jump (the first final event in the 1896 Olympics), was the first Olympic champion of the modern Olympic Games.

The First Marathon
In 490 BCE, Pheidippides, a Greek soldier, ran from Marathon to Athens (about 25 miles) to inform the Athenians the outcome of the battle with invading Persians. The distance was filled with hills and other obstacles; thus Pheidippides arrived in Athens exhausted and with bleeding feet. After telling the townspeople of the Greeks' success in the battle, Pheidippides fell to the ground dead. In 1896, at the first modern Olympic Games, held a race of approximately the same length in commemoration of Pheidippides.

The Exact Length of a Marathon
During the first several modern Olympics, the marathon was always an approximate distance. In 1908, the British royal family requested that the marathon start at the Windsor Castle so that the royal children could witness its start. The distance from the Windsor Castle to the Olympic Stadium was 42,195 meters (or 26 miles and 385 yards). In 1924, this distance became the standardized length of a marathon.

Women
Women were first allowed to participate in 1900 at the second modern Olympic Games.

Winter Games Begun
The winter Olympic Games were first held in 1924, beginning a tradition of holding them a few months earlier and in a different city than the summer Olympic Games. Beginning in 1994, the winter Olympic Games were held in completely different years (two years apart) than the summer Games.

Cancelled Games
Because of World War I and World War II, there were no Olympic Games in 1916, 1940, or 1944.

Tennis Banned
Tennis was played at the Olympics until 1924, then reinstituted in 1988.

Walt Disney
In 1960, the Winter Olympic Games were held in Squaw Valley, California (United States). In order to bedazzle and impress the spectators, Walt Disney was head of the committee that organized the opening day ceremonies. The 1960 Winter Games Opening Ceremony was filled with high school choirs and bands, releasing of thousands of balloons, fireworks, ice statues, releasing of 2,000 white doves, and national flags dropped by parachute.

Russia Not Present
Though Russia had sent a few athletes to compete in the 1908 and 1912 Olympic Games, they did not compete again until the 1952 Games.

Motor Boating
Motor boating was an official sport at the 1908 Olympics.

Polo, an Olympic Sport
Polo was played at the Olympics in 1900, 1908, 1920, 1924, and 1936.

Gymnasium
The word "gymnasium" comes from the Greek root "gymnos" meaning nude; the literal meaning of "gymnasium" is "school for naked exercise." Athletes in the ancient Olympic Games would participate in the nude.

Stadium
The first recorded ancient Olympic Games were held in 776 BCE with only one event - the stade. The stade was a unit of measurement (about 600 feet) that also became the name of the footrace because it was the distance run. Since the track for the stade (race) was a stade (length), the location of the race became the stadium.

Counting Olympiads
An Olympiad is a period of four successive years. The Olympic Games celebrate each Olympiad. For the modern Olympic Games, the first Olympiad celebration was in 1896. Every four years celebrates another Olympiad; thus, even the Games that were cancelled (1916, 1940, and 1944) count as Olympiads. The 2004 Olympic Games in Athens was called the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad.

Why people Avoid To Come On-Line

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Here is a post which will give you an insight about the main causes behind Why people are not coming online for the first time :


The Reasons Non-Users Aren’t Online

Reasons

Major
reason

Minor
reason

Not a
reason

I don’t want it

52%

16%

26%

I don’t need it

52

19

24

I’m worried about online pornography, credit card theft and fraud

43

14

37

It is too expensive

30

18

42

I don’t have time to use the Internet

29%

17%

49%

The Internet is too complicated and hard to understand

27

19

43

Don’t have a computer

11

n.a.

n.a.

Internet Scams

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Internet Scams: Don't Believe Everything You Read

When you receive an alarmist chain letter in the mail or see an outrageous article on the cover of a supermarket tabloid, you may easily recognize these as false. Some readers do not automatically question similar information on the Web or in an email forwarded by a friend. The Internet is still relatively new as a widespread method of communication, and many people are not yet savvy about identifying electronic hoaxes.

The Internet contains a wealth of valuable information, but it is often difficult to tell the good from the bad. With easy accessibility, low cost, and wide distribution, the Internet is a great medium for disseminating falsehoods and inaccuracies. Keep in mind that your 13-year-old neighbor can publish on the Web as easily as the New York Times can!

While most false information is not malicious, beware of scams intended to frighten or cheat you. Some common email scams are familiar from other media: get rich quick schemes; fad diets; and threatening email chain letters. But new technology begets new scams, from the scare over the nonexistent “Good Times” virus to an email circulated in 1998 that supposedly generated contributions for the American Cancer Society each time it was forwarded—in fact, it collected senders' email addresses so they could be sold for mailing lists.

What can you do to protect yourself from these types of scams? Here are a few simple tips:

  • Be a critical reader. Question what you see, and remember that Internet information is no more likely to be true than what you read in print media.
  • Check the source. Try to determine the origin of any information you read, and make sure the source is reliable. Email without an author or a source is probably worthless.
  • Don't download any software or .exe files from web sites or email unless you are sure of the source. You could be inviting a virus onto your computer.
  • Beware of supposedly true stories that happened to “a friend of a friend.” This is a common technique in urban myths to add credibility to a story. Similarly, don't assume that references legitimize a mailing—they may be part of the scam.
  • Don't reply to emails that contain a link to an unfamiliar email address or URL. There may be a hidden fee.
  • Don't perpetuate scams or contribute to Internet traffic congestion by forwarding email of dubious origin.
  • If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Using your common sense is the best protection against scams.

Most Popular Internet Activities


Internet Activities

Percent of
Internet users
who report
this activity

Send email

91%

Use a search engine to find information

90

Search for a map or driving directions

84

Do an Internet search to answer a specific question

80

Research a product or service before buying it

78

Check the weather

78

Look for info on a hobby or interest

77

Get travel info

73%

Get news

72

Buy a product

67

Surf the Web for fun

66

Look for health/medical info

66

Buy or make a reservation for travel

63

Look for political news/info

58

Go to a website that provides info or support for a specific medical condition or personal situation

58

Research for school or training

57

Watch a video clip or listen to an audio clip

56

Look for info from a government website

54

Look up phone number or address

54

Do any type of research for your job

51

Send instant messages

47

Get info online about a college, university or other school you or a family member might attend

45

Take a virtual tour of a location online

45

Look for info about a job

44

Get financial info

44

Check sports scores or info

43

Download other files such as games, videos, or pictures

42

Bank online

41

Download computer programs from the internet

39

Pay bills online

38

Play online games

36

Send or receive text messages using a cellphone

35

Use internet to get photos developed/display photos

34

Listen to music online at a website

34

Look for info about a place to live

34

Rate a product, service or person using an online rating system

30

Look for religious/spiritual info

30

Listen to a live or recorded radio broadcast online, such as a newscast, sporting event, or radio show

29

Search for info about someone you know or might meet

28

Share files from own computer w/ others

27

Read someone else's web log or “blog”

27

Download music files to your computer

25

Log on to the internet using a wireless device

25

Participate in an online auction

24

Research your family's history or genealogy

24

Look for weight loss or general fitness info

24

Download screensavers from the internet

23

Look for info about a mental health issue

23

Use online classified ads or sites like Craig's list

22

Chat in a chat room or in an online discussion

22

Download computer games from the internet

21

Create content for the internet

19

Make a donation to a charity online

18

Download video files to your computer

18

Take material you find online—like songs, text or images—and remix it into your own artistic creation

18

Look for info on something sensitive or embarrassing

18

Sell something online

17

Visit an adult website

13

Take a class online just for personal enjoyment or enrichment

13

Buy or sell stocks, bonds, or mutual funds

13

Send or receive an invitation to a meeting or party using an online invitation service

12

Buy groceries online

12

Take a class online for credit toward a degree of some kind

12

Use online social or professional networking sites like Friendster or LinkedIn

11

Pay to access or download digital content online, such as music, video, or newspaper articles

11

Create a web log or “blog”

9

Go to a dating website or other sites where you can meet other people online

9

Look for info about domestic violence

8

Make a phone call online

7

Check e-mail on a hand-held computer

5

Download or share adult content online

4

Play lottery or gamble online

4

Facts about EARTH

Age

The Earth is 4.56 billion years old...the same age as the Moon and the Sun.


Earthquakes

A magnitude-9.0 earthquake struck off the west coast of Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, on Sunday morning at 6:58 a.m. local time December 26, 2004. The giant tremor devastated the Indonesian province of Aceh, and created destructive tsunami waves that crashed onto far away beaches in Sri Lanka, Thailand, India and other countries. Reports of at least 140,000 dead and thousands still missing, mostly from the tsunamis.

As a result, the Earth actually shifted 3 degrees and has not went back since.

The world's largest recorded earthquakes are all megathrust events occurring at subduction zones. This magnitude-9.0 quake is the largest in 40 years, since the Good Friday earthquake in Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1964. It is the fourth largest in the last century, following only a 9.0 in Kamchatka in 1952, a 9.1 in Alaska in 1957, the 9.2 Prince William Sound quake, and the largest ever recorded, a magnitude-9.5 earthquake in Chile in 1960, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. All five events are megathrust quakes at subduction zones


Earthquakes

Every year over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.

Lightning

Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.


Motion

The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph.


Nations

267, dependent areas, and misc. areas.


Physical

  • Diameter of 7,905 miles
  • Total Area: 510,072,000 sq km
  • Land: 148,940,000 sq km - 29.2%
  • Water: 361,132,000 sq km - 70.8%

UFO's first appearance

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

One January evening, as he was hunting six miles south of Denison, Texas, John Martin saw a fast-moving object in the southern sky. When it passed overhead, he noted its resemblance to a "large saucer." What distinguished Martin's sighting from many thousands of others is that it took place in 1878.


"Flying saucers" as a phenomenon did not enter popular culture until late June 1947, after a flurry of sightings of mysterious aerial discs excited speculation focusing on, as some thought, secret American or Soviet aircraft and, as others suspected, extraterrestrial visitors. On the twenty-fourth, private pilot Kenneth Arnold spotted nine disc-shaped objects flying in formation and at an estimated 1,200 mph over Mount Rainier, Washington. In a newspaper interview he compared their motion to that of saucers skipping across water. Soon afterwards an anonymous headline writer in the Pacific Northwest coined the phrase "flying saucer," and the UFO age began, though "unidentified flying objects--the more sober and literally descriptive phrase thought up by an equally anonymous U.S. Air Force functionary-would not become a part of the public vocabulary until the mid-1950s.


Yet, as
the Martin report indicates, flying saucers and UFOs were around before 1947. In fact, from November 1896 until May 1897 newspapers all across America were filled with stories about mysterious "airships", cigar-shaped objects often said to flash brilliant searchlights-which at least some theorists, not to mention more than a few hoaxers, linked to visitors from Mars. Reports of what could reasonably be called UFOs appear sporadically in scientific journals and newspapers in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century but are rare or nonexistent before that. Pre-1800 reports of anomalous aerial phenomena, sometimes cited as evidence of the UFO phenomenon's long history, are more credibly explained as manifestations of nature or psyche. UFOs seem a relatively recent presence.

The Official History

The role of official agencies in UFO investigation is a subject of continuing dispute. There is, indisputably, a public history, and there is also evidence of a history concealed by official secrecy.

In the public history, the first U.S. Air Force effort to study UFO reports was conducted under the code name Project Sign, set up under the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio (later Wright-Patterson Air Force Base), on December 30, 1947. Sign investigated sighting reports considered significant (routine sightings were handled by intelligence officers at local air bases). The first of these was a January 7, 1948, incident in which a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, Capt. Thomas F. Mantell, Jr., died in a plane crash while trying to intercept something he described, in one of his last radio transmissions, as a "metallic object ... of tremendous size." Though the Air Force first contended, implausibly, that this "object" was the planet Venus, it eventually would be identified as a balloon launched in connection with the Navy's then-classified Skyhook project.

A more impressive report came later in 1948 from two Eastern Air Lines pilots, Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted. As their DC-3 flew over Alabama at 2:45 A.M. on July 24, Chiles and Whitted sighted a wingless, torpedo-shaped object as it streaked past them. It had two rows of square windows from which, Chiles reported, "a very bright light was glowing. Underneath the ship there was a blue glow of light." A flame extended 50 feet from the rear. The UFO, in view for no more than 10 seconds, was also seen by a passenger. Sign investigators learned that an hour earlier, a ground maintenance crewman at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, had observed an identical UFO. Moreover, four days before that, a rocket shaped object with two rows of windows had been seen over The Hague, Netherlands.

By the time of the Chiles-Whitted sighting, Project Sign had split into factions with differing views of the flying-disc mystery. One held that the objects were interplanetary spacecraft, another that they were Soviet secret weapons, yet another that they were mundane phenomena which had been misinterpreted. It seemed clear that the Chiles-Whitted object was neither terrestrial nor conventional, the first faction boldly prepared an "estimate of the situation" which argued that the UFO evidence pointed unmistakably to otherworldly visitation. The estimate, classified Top Secret, was sent through channels all the way to the Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, who rejected it and ordered all copies burned. The document remained secret until 1956, when a book by a retired Air Force UFO-project officer, Edward J. Ruppelt, reported the story behind it. Though other sources backed Ruppelt's account, for years the Air Force insisted the document was a fiction created by, as a Pentagon UFO spokesman put it in 1960, "avid saucer believers."

In fact, Vandenberg's rejection of the estimate's conclusion led to the dissolution of the pro-extraterrestrial faction, whose members left the Air Force or were reassigned. The anti-UFO faction now came into prominence, and on February 11, 1949, the aptly named Project Grudge was created to replace the demoralized Project Sign. Grudge devoted itself to minimal investigating and maximum debunking, and by the end of the year, its files had been put into storage. By the summer of 1950, it was down to a single investigator, Lt. Jerry Cummings.

After a series of radar/visual sightings of fastmoving UFOs over Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, in September 1951, complaints about the quality of Grudge's work by the head of Air Force Intelligence, Maj. Gen. C. P. Cabell, and other high-ranking officers and officials led to the reorganization of the project. Lt. Ed Ruppelt, an intelligence officer assigned to the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson AFB, became its head. Ruppelt insisted that investigations be conducted without prior judgments about the reality or unreality of UFOs, and under his leadership Grudge and, as it became known in March 1952, Project Blue Book did just that. By the time he left the project in early 1954, Ruppelt was essentially convinced of the reality of space visitors, and his memoir of his experiences, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1956), would become one of the literature's most important works.

Blue Book, however, would revert before long to the pattern Grudge had set. The summer 1952 sighting wave instigated this renewed skepticism, culminating in a spectacular series of radar and eyewitness observations over Washington, D.C., on the weekends of July 19-20 and 26-27. Intelligence channels were clogged with UFO-related traffic, leading to high-level concerns about the Soviet Union's ability to exploit this communications logjam and also to use UFO stories for psychological-warfare purposes.

Because of this concern, in January 1953 a panel of five scientists, all UFO skeptics, was secretly convened to examine Blue Book's data. Over the next four days they spent a total of 12 hours considering various sighting reports as well as two UFO films (one taken in Montana, the other in Utah) before declaring further official study a "great waste of effort." The Robertson panel (named after its head, physicist and CIA employee H. P. Robertson) recommended a public "debunking" campaign which "would result in the reduction in public interest of 'flying saucers'." It also urged that civilian UFO groups "be watched because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking.... The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind."

Though the Robertson panel and its recommendations remained classified for years, they would exert an enormous impact on the course of UFO history. The Air Force began immediately to reduce Blue Book's status and resources, and after Ruppelt's departure the project became mostly a public-relations exercise devoted to explaining sightings by whatever means necessary and downplaying their significance. Even the Air Force's chief scientific advisor, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who had attended the meetings (though not as a panel member), would complain, "The Robertson panel ... made the subject of UFOs scientifically unrespectable, and for nearly 20 years not enough attention was paid to the subject to acquire the kind of data needed even to decide the nature of the UFO phenomenon."

The Air Force botched an opportunity to do just that when it prepared Project Blue Book Special Report 14, released in October 1955. The report had its genesis in a January 1952 agreement between Grudge and the Battelle Memorial Institute, a think tank based in Columbus, Ohio. Battelle was to analyze UFO reports and in other ways to assist the Air Force in dealing with the problem. Project Stork, as the classified Battelle project was code-named, officially commenced work on March 31 and continued into the spring of 1955. Its findings were incorporated into Report 14.

The Stork study found that from a number of points of view, the best UFO sightings were puzzling indeed. A chi-square test, used in statistics to determine whether one thing is truly different from another, showed that there was virtually no possibility that "unknown" (unexplained) sightings were the same as "knowns" (explained)-thus falsifying the hypothesis that unknowns are simply knowns for which there is insufficient information for a proper identification. As Stork learned, the unknown--, were the cases for which the greatest amount of information was available.

Crashes, Cover-ups, and Controversies

In the United States, however, the enthusiasm for occult and psychosocial approaches had mostly passed by the late 1970s. One reason was that the release of many classified UFO reports, retrieved through the Freedom of Information Act, reminded ufologists of the radar/visual cases and other impressive sightings that had excited their interest in the subject to start with. Related to this was revived speculation about an official cover-up.

Keyhoe and other early critics of the cover-up suspected the Air Force of hiding dramatic sightings by interceptor pilots as well as films and radar trackings of UFOs. Few credited widespread rumors that the Air Force possessed more positive proof of extraterrestrial visitation, such as the remains of crashed saucers and the bodies of their occupants. Reports of this nature had figured in a notorious hoax perpetrated on a gullible writer, Frank Scully, who passed them on in a best-selling book, Behind the Flying Saucers (1950). Launched as part of a scam by two confidence artists, the hoax subsequently was exposed in the then-popular magazine True.

Even so, the stories refused to die. In the 1970s veteran ufologist Leonard H. Stringfield started collecting reports and interviewing individuals who claimed knowledge, sometimes firsthand, of such events. Two other ufologists, Stanton T. Friedman and William L. Moore, concentrated their attention on one particular episode, the alleged crash of a UFO in Lincoln County, New Mexico, in early July 1947, and pursued the first in-depth investigation of what Stringfield had dubbed a "retrieval of the third kind." They interviewed nearly three dozen individuals who were directly involved and also spoke with another fifty or so who had indirect involvement. A few years later a Chicago organization, the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), conducted its own inquiry, bringing the total of sources, ranging from area ranchers to Air Force generals, to over four hundred. The "Roswell incident"-so called because the Air Force's initial investigation was conducted out of Roswell Field in Roswell, New Mexico-emerged as a central concern of American ufology.

Though the Roswell incident itself seemed well documented and genuinely puzzling, it brought with it a host of less verifiable claims. Moore reported that his investigation of the Roswell incident brought him into contact with cover-up insiders within military and civilian intelligence agencies. These individuals, to whom he assigned various avian pseudonyms and whom he dubbed "the birds" (Falcon, Condor, Sparrow, and so on), related fantastic tales not only of spaceship crashes but of faceto-face contact between aliens and U.S. government representatives. The birds promised, in their words, a "truckload of documents" to support these incredible allegations but produced only a handful of pieces of paper, including pages from a briefing book supposedly prepared for President Carter.

The most notorious document arrived one day in December 1984 in an envelope, postmarked Albuquerque and sent to Moore associate Jaime Shandera with no return address. Inside the envelope was a roll of 35mm. film which, when developed, was found to contain a portion of a Presidential briefing document dated November 18,1952. Allegedly writtenby Vice Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, it purported to inform President-elect Eisenhower of two UFO crashes--one in Roswell in 1947, the other along the Texas-Mexico border in 1950-and of the existence of an "Operation Majestic-12" (MJ-12 for short), consisting of prominent figures in intelligence, science, and the military, who oversaw the study of the wreckage and the corpses of "extraterrestrial biological entities" (EBEs).

When a copy of the briefing paper came into the hands of British ufologist Timothy Good (who claimed an unnamed intelligence source had given it to him), Good announced as much to the British press. Moore and Shandera released their copy at the same time May 1987-and the result was furious controversy and massive publicity, including coverage in the New York Times and on ABC television's Nightline. The FBI launched a probe out of its offices in New York City and Los Angeles but was as unsuccessful as ufologists were in getting to the bottom of the matter. For technical reasons having to do with a suspicious signature and format problems, the document is believed to be a forgery by all but a few diehard defenders. The forger's motives and identity, however, remain as mysterious as do those of Moore's "birds."

The future of UFOlogy

Recent years have seen the growing professionalization of UFO study. This is partly the result of a natural maturation process, but it also has to do with the influx into ufology's ranks of social scientists and mental-health professionals intrigued by UFO-abduction experiences reported by apparently sane and sincere persons. In the early 1990s systematic work on the phenomenon commenced as efforts were made to determine whether such experiences were internally or externally generated.

The psychosocial hypothesis still holds sway in Europe, though it has been challenged by a series of spectacular radar/visual cases in Belgium between 1989 and 1990. In America, interest in coverups, crashes, and the extraterrestrial hypothesis continues, with new discoveries, documents, rumors, and stories surfacing regularly. Whether or not it succeeds in making its case or in settling its disagreements, ufology has unquestionably entered what may be its liveliest period.