More About The Inauguration 'UFO'

Remember that "UFO" that appeared in the CNN video during the Obama Inauguration? Well, it wasn't the Mexicans -- that has been proved; it wasn't the "other" aliens either; and according to the YouTube video by xmaddness posted here on T.A.C. on February 9, it seemed to have been a bird.

Now Billy Cox of the Herald Tribune from Sarasota, FL. seems to be in doubt that a bird caused that strike passing fast across, or in front, of the Washington Monument.

The plot continues to thicken...

So I guess we'll have to put the out of space, ultrasonic, anti-loose of money in any bad economy, protection against gay tendencies, hetero-sexy hat, courtesy of Dick Cheney, to Wolf and Anderson, not that, at this point in his life, it would give Anderson that much protection. But just to be on the safe side.

...

And, by the way, for those of you who, like ME! will find that last word in the seventh paragraph of the article: "eval," a source of distress, I looked it up and found out that it comes from the Latin aevum which means: lifetime, age, eternity, relating to time or duration. Which in that sentence, "That said, here’s the e-mail eval," it makes no sense whatsoever -- or my English is still not good enough to understand all the idioms in the American edition of the English language.

As for the fifth paragraph... You're on your own; I have no idea what language that is (Dutch perhaps), much less what it says.

---

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a ... bird(?)

By Billy Cox

Published: Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 10:40 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 10:41 a.m.

So, did a UFO make a cameo at Barack Obama’s inauguration last month or not?

Here’s the raw footage inadvertently captured by CNN — http://www.wikio.com/video/789132 — while Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper pondered Meaning & Significance on Jan. 20. It zips past the Washington Monument at the 11-second mark. If you blink, you’ll miss it.

The sequence went viral almost immediately thereafter. Slowed to a crawl, freeze-framed, reversed, color-enhanced and debated ad nauseum, the images generated a particularly lively conversation at http://news1800.com/2009/01/most-popular/cnn-catches-ufo-on-camera-during-inauguration/:

“It looks possibly interdimensional because it flies in front of the Washington Monument and also seems to have a transluscence about it”; “It’s not a bird. The question is: is it one of ours, or one of ‘their’s?”; “This looks like a ‘ROD’ ... some are as small as insects, and others are miles long. I caught one while videotaping a wedding & it flew all around the bride”; “The writer of this article is a retard”; and “boven de Mall gehooverd, om de boel te monitoren. Dat blijkt na minutieuze bestudering van de TV-BEELDEN op CNN. (Mirror) waar klip en klaar een merkwaardige anomalie in het zwerk ..."

Then, unlike the MSM, which won’t relinquish a subject until it’s been trampled into bloody hash, this Internet furor just went away. Poof. Strange. A potentially bodacious event on top of an already historic American moment and not a dollop of scientific analysis.

So De Void contacted longtime UFO investigator Bruce Maccabee, an optical physicist who logged a 36-year career working with the U.S. Navy. He’s been here before, and he cautioned that the only way to get a real handle on the image would be to acquire sharper footage than this Internet stuff. That said, here’s the e-mail eval:

“Based on what I can see I can say that the rather faint or diffuse image of the ‘UFO’ is consistent with what one gets when a small object moves several times its own length during the shutter or frame time of a video camera (1/30 sec). For example, a 6" long bird moving at 30 ft per second goes 1 foot in a frame time. The image it would make when silhouetted against the sky would be a line that is twice as long as the bird length and would appear as a darkened area or thick line as compared to the brightness of the adjacent sky.

“The contrast between the ‘elongated image’ of the bird and the adjacent sky background would be less than the contrast between a stationary bird and the sky. The faster the bird goes, the longer the line and the less contrast there is between the line made by the bird and the sky adjacent to the line.

“Although the length of the line ‘UFO’ is about the width of the monument (some 55 ft), that does not mean that the hypothetical bird traveled 55 ft in a frame time of 1/30 sec. The distance to the object is not known. It might have been relatively close to the camera and blurred because of its speed.

“The bottom line is that, unless someone can show better evidence, I would say this was a bird zipping through the field of view, which explains why there were no witness reports of a 55 ft long UFO zipping past the monument.”

Those of you jonesing to respond to this critique: Be cogent, speak English, and don’t be hatin’ ...