These two books have been acclaimed because of their historical research and not just because Canids is the first book ever to look at the history, near extinction and return of the fox in the UK: both look at historical implications and deal sensibly with the claims of so called cryptozoologists -and you might be surprised by the conclusions.
Nature/wildlife lover or interested in mysteries -these two will be for you!
Cover prices will not increase until after Christmas 2018!
I just spent two hours typing a post to cover all of this and...Blogger has lost it. It was posted but, and this is sadly NOT a rarity with Bogger, it vanished.
James & Coral Lorenzen of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) had mentioned in at least two editions of its APRO Bulletin how Frank Scully and Co. had been exposed as hoaxers fairly quickly in the 1950s over their crashed flying saucer story -Roswell. It was a hoax. Fake. Never happened. I spent from 1979-1985 trying to look into the Roswell crash and Leonard H. Stringfield did all in his power to make the Crash-Retrieval phenomenon a profitable concern.
But, today, Roswell is still touted as a profitable business for local community concerns as well as ufologist hacks who have no interest in the truth.
Another profitable, for some, UFO crash was the one alleged to have taken place in 1897. In the early 1970s almost everyone involved in ufology knew that it was a hoax -the perpetrator admitted it within days.
Jim Marrs and UFO Hunters as well as so many of the other liars have tried to make -and succeeded where certain people are concerned- the 1897 event genuine. With UFOs twenty suckers are born every minute.
You want to believe in a Dr Who-UFO fantasy world where around 150+ flying saucers have crashed since 1947...well, if it makes you happy.
If you want to know the facts then read the below from the APRO Bulletin Vol. 21, no. 6 of May-June, 1973. Challenge the ufological liars who throw away facts because lies and deceit make money...from you.
Calls from the BBC as well as an Irish radio station today and I responded that, with all the recent asteroid and other debris sighted I believe this was a large meteorite breaking up.
Lucia Binding, news reporter,Sky News
UFO investigated in Ireland after multiple aircraft sightings
The Irish Aviation Authority is investigating an unidentified flying object (UFO) after pilots reported seeing one off the coast of Ireland.
Shannon Air Traffic Control received a call from a British Airways pilot flying from Montreal to Heathrow over County Kerry at 6.47am on 9 November.
In an audio clip posted by LiveATC.net, the pilot can be heard asking if there were military exercises taking place within the craft's airspace at the time.
She said the object came up alongside the plane before vanishing at "a very high speed".
"Alongside you?" the Shannon Air Traffic Controller replied.
"It came up on our left-hand-side and then rapidly veered to the north," the BA pilot said.
She said it was "a bright light and then it disappeared at a very high-speed", adding they were "wondering" what it could be - adding that that it did not seem to be on a collision course.
Controllers on the ground said there was "nothing showing on either primary or secondary (radar)".
Two other planes can then be heard reporting the sighting to Shannon Air Traffic Control.
A Virgin Airlines pilot suggested that the it could be an object re-entering the earth's atmosphere after reporting seeing "multiple objects following the same sort of trajectory... very bright from where we were."
Another pilot said the speed of the UFO was "astronomical, it was like Mach 2", or twice the speed of sound.
Despite the term UFO being widely used for extra-terrestrial spacecraft, most UFOs are later identified as conventional objects or phenomena.
The Irish Aviation Authority said they were investigating the incident.
In a statement, an IAA spokesman told Sky News: "Following reports from a small number of aircraft on Friday 9th November of unusual air activity the IAA has filed a report.
"This report will be investigated under the normal confidential occurrence investigation process."
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionThe pilots spotted fast flying objects and bright lights in the sky
The Irish Aviation Authority is investigating reports of bright lights and UFOs off the south-west coast of Ireland.
It began at 06:47 local time on Friday 9 November when a British Airways pilot contacted Shannon air traffic control.
She wanted to know if there were military exercises in the area because there was something "moving so fast".
The air traffic controller said there were no such exercises.
The pilot, flying from the Canadian city of Montreal to Heathrow, said there was a "very bright light" and the object had come up along the left side of the aircraft before it "rapidly veered to the north".
She was wondering what it could be but said it did not seem to be heading for a collision.
Another pilot from a Virgin plane joined in and suggested it might be a meteor or another object re-entering the earth's atmosphere.
Image copyrightTWITTER
He said there were "multiple objects following the same sort of trajectory" and that they were very bright.
The pilot said he saw "two bright lights" over to the right which climbed away at speed.
One pilot said the speed was "astronomical, it was like Mach 2" - which is twice the speed of sound.
What could it have been?
Apostolos Christou, an astronomer from the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, said what the pilots saw was probably a piece of dust entering the earth's atmosphere at very high speed.
"It was most likely what are commonly called shooting stars," he said.
"It appears the matter was extremely bright so it must have been quite a large piece of material.
"I cannot say from the pilots' description, but it could have been the size of a walnut or an apple."
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
The astronomer said November tended to be a very active month for such activity.
"It also appears there were bits coming off the object and flying past the aeroplane, that is also what you would expect if it was a particularly large rock from space hitting the atmosphere, it would tend to fragment."
"Following reports from a small number of aircraft on Friday 9 November of unusual air activity the IAA has filed a report," the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) said.
"This report will be investigated under the normal confidential occurrence investigation process."
A spokesperson for Shannon Airport said it would not be appropriate for the airport to comment while the IAA investigation is ongoing.
I must admit that I am very disappointed. On the 29th October I announced that the first issue of the AOP Journal was available. Since that time there have been several thousand views of the announcement.
And sales have totalled....zero
Now as it seems that no one wants to buy any of the books I have written -three sold since 2010- I thought that a 52 pages publication that was non-sensationalist and offered facts for £6 would be seen as a bargain.
The total lack of interest has made me decide that the amount of work involved in a regular, quarterly is not worth it. It takes a lot of time and energy and a hell of a lot of work to produce a 52 pager so to continue a publication that has attracted no interest is pointless. It does mean that I have now also shelved the Special Issues dealing with specific cases or subjects.
The first issue will be online store until it or I am gone. NO -there will be no freebies and certainly no free download version.
AOP JOURNAL 1
Paperback,
52 Pages
Price:£6.00 (excl. VAT)Prints in 3-5 business days
Technical and scientific based journal looking at what has become known as "UFOs" -including natural phenomena some not yet scientifically understood. This is NOT a sensationalist publication but will contain fully referenced articles and reports to help promote further serious study.
You don't need a time machine when you visit the French Space Centre headquarters in Toulouse - it's already a throwback to the 1970s. Green lawns sweep on to wide boulevards with stout long rectangular office blocks on either side.Thousands of UFO sightings are reported every year but not many countries are willing to spend money investigating them - there is just one dedicated state-run team left in Europe. Is France onto something?
It's almost Soviet-style in the heart of southern France. There are few signs of life even though 1,500 people, most of them civil servants, work in boxy offices along narrow unappealing corridors.
France has the biggest space agency in Europe - the result of the 1960s space race and President Charles de Gaulle's grand determination to keep France independent of the US by building its own satellites, rocket launchers and providing elite space research.
An offshoot of all that - France is the only country in Europe to maintain a full-time state-run UFO (unidentified flying objects) department. There used to be one in the UK and another in Denmark but they closed down years ago due to budget cuts.
France's UFO unit consists of four staff, and about a dozen volunteers who get their expenses paid to go on site and look into reports of strange sightings in the skies.
Image captionA drawing from the files at the French UFO department
The team is called Geipan. That's a French acronym for Study Group and Information on Non-Identified Aerospace Phenomenon.
Its boss is Xavier Passot. Surrounded by dozens of books on UFOs, and stacks of documents, he tells me his mission is to be as transparent as possible about strange sightings and to follow up on each one that his team receives.They publish their results ontheir websitewhich gets 30,000 hits a month. The team receives, on average, two UFO sightings a day. The department insists an 11-page form is filled out for each one. The idea is to provide details including photographs where possible but also weed out jokers and time-wasters.
If someone claims to have seen strange lights in the skies, the UFO team might go online to see whether the observation took place on a flight path - it can trace commercial air traffic going back more than a week.
The team also has access to military flight paths and is in touch with the air force and air traffic controllers.
Sometimes if its staff are really intrigued by photos they have seen or if there have been several witnesses to the same sighting, they will call the local police to ask whether they can be considered credible.
They might even check with neighbours to see whether they were out drinking that night or perhaps smoking something other than cigarettes.
Passot says many of the people who get in touch are smokers, puffing away outside bars or their own homes at night, gazing at the stars.
One of the boxy offices houses yellowing archives going back to the 1950s. The papers I look at contain eerie accounts of strange things encountered in the skies by fighter pilots on routine reconnaissance missions.
For what it's worth and for those who suspect there's conspiracy afoot, Passot tells me he has never covered up a UFO sighting.
I take a look at some amazing photos of strange lights and circular forms caught on camera. One, taken by a motorist, of a white ring shape above Marseille is particularly grabbing (the image at the top of this page). But the team figured that one out - it wasn't invaders from Mars, just the reflection of a small interior overhead light in the car.
In fact, the department can explain away nearly all these phenomena and, believe it or not, the most common culprits are Chinese lanterns sent up at night during parties. The investigators often telephone the local town hall to ask if, perhaps, there had been a wedding going on at the time.
Balloons and kites floating in the skies also get mistaken for alien craft, and space debris and falling meteorites giving off strange lights are more common than one might think.
More from the Magazine
Image copyrightGIORNALE DEL MATTINO
Sixty years ago a football match ground to a halt when unidentified flying objects were spotted above a stadium in Florence. Did aliens come to earth? If not, what were they?
But there are around 400 UFO sightings going back to the 1970s that the French team cannot explain. One, an alleged flying saucer landing near Aix-en-Provence in 1981, they take very seriously - there were landing marks and multiple witnesses.
So are there really little green men? Well, the jury's out on the colour but there are many working here, as well as others around the world, who are convinced there is some life out there.
And does the use of French taxpayers' money on UFO research make sense, particularly in these times of budgetary constraint?
That probably depends on whether you just saw an alien and, in the words of those Ghostbusters, who you gonna call?
