Jerry Cohen —
Exposing A Pretender's Pawl
by Alfred Lehmberg
A "pawl" is a notched wheel that is designed to allow mechanical movement in only one trip-hammered direction. One finds them employed in the heavy industrial all the way to the works of clocks and watches. Now, consider the mechanism of skepticism: logic and science as procedural pawls ratcheting the enlightenment of our threatened species... and, what ho! Revealed! Our malicious faux-skeptic's "pawl," a turbid mass of unjustified arrogance and unearned hubris moreover, operating in reverse, of course!
It's a mockery of a "catch in our cultural wheel" that by definition would otherwise ratchet 'forward' and not allow for the backsliding slip to a previous unenlightened position... then locked there. Clearly, touted phony Wars of pecuniary convenience for "Coal, Christmas, and Christianity" must give way to the very real wars on data following science, efficacious intelligence, and our most valuable if squandered quality... human imagination.
The CSI (That Center for the Silly and Insentient Commitment of Obdurate Persons) is ever realizing its eventual recognition and righteous identification as a hindrance to total human advancement, a barrier to its efficacious progression, and as an organization toxic to what may be a more creatively efficacious intelligence derided... and even a general quality of satisfied life. ...At least as regards UFOs... ...and that must taint their initiatives elsewhere! Sloppy is as sloppy does, and they've been very sloppy with regard to UFOs.
The CSI is a mocking ratchet in reverse, in the aggregate. It is an attempted slide to a previously held position and then locked there awaiting another opportunity for a subsequent regressive slip. That's this writer's perception...
CSICOP's days are numbered... even if it is, still, and very unfortunately, a big number. Humility will win out over hubris as it often does. The reader can take heart in that.
Still, like a more porcine Rush Limbaugh of the counter-paranormal, the CSI ignores the facts, creatively spins the evidence, and discounts the proof embraced by institutions, individuals, or ideas contrary to its own on the subject of UFOs. The preceding could be an essay map. Verily, it lacks the consistency it would otherwise demand in others and it prosecutes its very canted agenda in a decidedly one-sided manner. Examples?
It embraces intellectual, "think cloak" fallacies like "extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence..." ...which is only a clever dodge to ensure a CSI controlled level of evidence that is constantly raising its own bar. Goalposts can be kept on greased coasters.
Additionally, it employs "Occam's razor," (a cant to the simplest explanation possible) which is used to justify 'BALLOONS' for hovering objects not shot down in a hail of antiaircraft fire over Los Angeles in 1942, 'BIRDS AND BOLIDES' for 21 hours of continuous UFO activity in West Virginia circa 1952, and 'VENUS' for a huge triangular craft witnessed by hundreds (and five counties of police officers) over southern Illinois in 1991... These are an iceberg's tip in the way of examples.
If the reader has the slightest doubt regarding the preceding they only have to take an enjoyably informative gander at Jerry Cohen's very excellent website at http://www.cohenufo.org and compare it with the all-proclamation-and-churlish-pronouncements, whiningly pontificated at the CSI site found at http://www.csicop.org. Here's a man to reinstall your disingenuous and suspect pawl.
Cohen deconstructs the CSI at every turn he takes, rationally negates many of the CSI's easy ufological presumptions (blighting the rest), and invalidates, magnificently (with some humor and a dash of appropriate sarcasm), the presumed charter and even mandate of the CSI's core organization. Don't take my word for it. Go see for yourself. The dragon, if not dead, lies dying with Cohen's lance in its chest!
Mr. Cohen is old guard (...been around and diligently researching for years), but he is descriptive of an evolving breed of ufologist that uses the opposition's own arguments as evidence of that opposition's fallaciousness. Mr. Cohen refreshingly goes, unlike the CSI, where the data leads. Rare bird, THAT.
Moreover, he clearly provides citation along with his rational progressive thinking in a hyper-textual manner that balances both sides of the contentious argument. This is the complete antithesis of the CSI.
Finally, he makes it transparently obvious that our cultural deck is sullenly stacked by an officious mainstream devoid of the same veracity that it demands of its hapless adherents. Does it not make it measurably more clear with its sullen intransigence and academic betrayals that, not only are we not in "Kansas" anymore, good reader, maybe we were never in "Kansas", at all!
Read on.
█_Æ£_█
It's a mockery of a "catch in our cultural wheel" that by definition would otherwise ratchet 'forward' and not allow for the backsliding slip to a previous unenlightened position... then locked there. Clearly, touted phony Wars of pecuniary convenience for "Coal, Christmas, and Christianity" must give way to the very real wars on data following science, efficacious intelligence, and our most valuable if squandered quality... human imagination.
The CSI (That Center for the Silly and Insentient Commitment of Obdurate Persons) is ever realizing its eventual recognition and righteous identification as a hindrance to total human advancement, a barrier to its efficacious progression, and as an organization toxic to what may be a more creatively efficacious intelligence derided... and even a general quality of satisfied life. ...At least as regards UFOs... ...and that must taint their initiatives elsewhere! Sloppy is as sloppy does, and they've been very sloppy with regard to UFOs.
The CSI is a mocking ratchet in reverse, in the aggregate. It is an attempted slide to a previously held position and then locked there awaiting another opportunity for a subsequent regressive slip. That's this writer's perception...
CSICOP's days are numbered... even if it is, still, and very unfortunately, a big number. Humility will win out over hubris as it often does. The reader can take heart in that.
Still, like a more porcine Rush Limbaugh of the counter-paranormal, the CSI ignores the facts, creatively spins the evidence, and discounts the proof embraced by institutions, individuals, or ideas contrary to its own on the subject of UFOs. The preceding could be an essay map. Verily, it lacks the consistency it would otherwise demand in others and it prosecutes its very canted agenda in a decidedly one-sided manner. Examples?
It embraces intellectual, "think cloak" fallacies like "extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence..." ...which is only a clever dodge to ensure a CSI controlled level of evidence that is constantly raising its own bar. Goalposts can be kept on greased coasters.
Additionally, it employs "Occam's razor," (a cant to the simplest explanation possible) which is used to justify 'BALLOONS' for hovering objects not shot down in a hail of antiaircraft fire over Los Angeles in 1942, 'BIRDS AND BOLIDES' for 21 hours of continuous UFO activity in West Virginia circa 1952, and 'VENUS' for a huge triangular craft witnessed by hundreds (and five counties of police officers) over southern Illinois in 1991... These are an iceberg's tip in the way of examples.
If the reader has the slightest doubt regarding the preceding they only have to take an enjoyably informative gander at Jerry Cohen's very excellent website at http://www.cohenufo.org and compare it with the all-proclamation-and-churlish-pronouncements, whiningly pontificated at the CSI site found at http://www.csicop.org. Here's a man to reinstall your disingenuous and suspect pawl.
Cohen deconstructs the CSI at every turn he takes, rationally negates many of the CSI's easy ufological presumptions (blighting the rest), and invalidates, magnificently (with some humor and a dash of appropriate sarcasm), the presumed charter and even mandate of the CSI's core organization. Don't take my word for it. Go see for yourself. The dragon, if not dead, lies dying with Cohen's lance in its chest!
Mr. Cohen is old guard (...been around and diligently researching for years), but he is descriptive of an evolving breed of ufologist that uses the opposition's own arguments as evidence of that opposition's fallaciousness. Mr. Cohen refreshingly goes, unlike the CSI, where the data leads. Rare bird, THAT.
Moreover, he clearly provides citation along with his rational progressive thinking in a hyper-textual manner that balances both sides of the contentious argument. This is the complete antithesis of the CSI.
Finally, he makes it transparently obvious that our cultural deck is sullenly stacked by an officious mainstream devoid of the same veracity that it demands of its hapless adherents. Does it not make it measurably more clear with its sullen intransigence and academic betrayals that, not only are we not in "Kansas" anymore, good reader, maybe we were never in "Kansas", at all!
Read on.
█_Æ£_█
"If one pays attention, not only does one never step into the same river twice, one never steps in the same river, once." Terence McKenna
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