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Misperceptions

Isn't there a post somewhere on here about someone hearing a thumping noise and it turned out to be a mobile phone picking up a signal and interfering with the sub woofer speakers on their PC? Sure I read it a few nights ago. That should be on here.
 
Yesterday I was being driven through the drab Norfolk countryside when I suddenly noticed a diamond shaped object ringed by flashing lights hovering in the sky. I wondered briefly if it could be one of the infamous flying triangles, but it didn't seem to be going anywhere, and looked rather small.

The driver assured me that it was some kind of "new fangled tethered scarecrow balloon thingy" and that there was another one about somewhere which looked just like a "silver flying saucer".

I've had a quick look on the web, but the only thing I've found are these Scare-Eye Balloons, which weren't what I saw at all. Does anyone know what exactly these things are?
 
Well i think i found the "flying saucer" bird repellant here

And you might have seen a variation of their delta kite design from that same website.
 
Yes, that looks more like it. Definately a Helikite. I suppose the flashing lights could have been scare tape, but it was a pretty overcast day and they really did look like they were pulsating.
 
Near miss that wasn't (allegedly):
Planes 'seen in close encounter'

Officials have denied any breach of safety after two planes were pictured apparently flying perilously close together over east London.
The aircraft - a DHL plane and a Japan Airlines jet - were reportedly seen flying over West Ham FC's Upton Park ground just after 1500 GMT on Saturday.

The Civil Aviation Authority said no near miss had been reported and it was impossible to tell how close they were.

DHL said both planes had landed at Heathrow with no safety lapses.

The photographer who captured the image told the Sunday Mirror he started taking photos after seeing the planes apparently coming together "on a collision course".

But a spokesman for DHL said photographs could be "incredibly deceptive".

"In the picture, they look like they are close together but it doesn't mean they are. And in fact they were not," he said.

"If there had been any incident of them being close together, there are all sorts of systems which would have gone off, both in the plane itself and at air traffic control - but there wasn't any report of an incident."

The spokesman said there was no question that either aircraft had strayed from its proper path, which should mean there was a distance of some two and a half miles between them.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4660644.stm
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The picture still looks pretty scary to me!

So was this a genuine misperception, or are the officials putting spin on the story to re-assure the people of London?
 
pictures of the planes here. It really is terrifying. I just can't see how that is safe.
 
I don't know, the plane on the left looks significantly smaller than the one on the right, which could be due to it being higher up. Perhaps by a couple of miles, as they say.
 
The spokesman said there was no question that either aircraft had strayed from its proper path, which should mean there was a distance of some two and a half miles between them.
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I don' think so-o-o-o!

The smaller plane is clearly the nearer one - if the bigger plane was over two miles further away, surely it would have appeared quite a bit smaller than the smaller plane
- if you follow me. :D
(Even allowing for telephoto lens effects.)

I suspect a cover-up...


Mods! Please move to Conspiracy! 8)
 
gncxx said:
I don't know, the plane on the left looks significantly smaller than the one on the right, which could be due to it being higher up. Perhaps by a couple of miles, as they say.
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No, the smaller plane is the nearer, as it obscures the tail of the larger one.

We need an aero enthusiast who can identify what planes these really are to shed further light on the subject. (Shouldn't be hard, since the airlines are identified.)
 
rynner said:
gncxx said:
I don't know, the plane on the left looks significantly smaller than the one on the right, which could be due to it being higher up. Perhaps by a couple of miles, as they say.
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No, the smaller plane is the nearer, as it obscures the tail of the larger one.
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Sorry, I thought I could see the bigger plane's tail fin under the smaller one. Maybe not.
 
The smaller plane is definitely in front. I can believe that with distorted perspective they might have been a fair way apart, but 2.5 miles?!?! I think not. Not unless that bigger plane is absolutely huge.
 
mindalai said:
just spotted the explanation here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1 ... e_continue
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Near-misses, by the usual definition, are when aircraft come within 1,000 feet of each other vertically or three miles horizontally. However surprising it may seem, the planes were indeed a thousand feet apart, in the so-called "Lambourne stack", a holding area centred over Essex for planes waiting to land at Heathrow airport.
Such has been the interest in Bland's photo that National Air Traffic Services has been forced to return to its radar data before confirming its decision. Its conclusion is that the DHL plane was at 9,000 feet. The Japan Airlines plane, flight JL401 from Tokyo, was next in the queue, circling at 10,000 feet. An air traffic control spokeswoman puts it firmly: "There's no issue here - it just looks that way because we had a very clear day."

A clue to the illusion is provided by the planes' dimensions. If they were side by side on the ground, the Boeing 777 would be 40% bigger than the DHL cargo plane. But in the picture, they look similarly proportioned.

There were 207 near-misses in British airspace in 2004. The majority of these, however, involved private or military planes and were corrected swiftly with little risk. In recent years, just one passenger jet has been in an incident categorised as an "actual risk of collision" - a FlyBe plane between Newcastle and Belfast which was buzzed by two Hawk fighter planes in October 2004.

As for scary photographs, David Learmount, safety editor of Flight International magazine, has seen it all before: "All you have to do is site yourself below one of the Heathrow stacks. I've seen many of these pictures and I know how many anoraks there are sitting on Midhurst Down [a popular spot for planespotters] just waiting to see something like this."
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Good find! So the idea of over 2 miles separation was b*ll*x - they were only 1000 feet apart (less than half a mile).
 
Adopt the Beast of Margam

Phantom Beast Of Margam Turns Out To Be Lost Pooch

For several weeks residents in South Wales had been reporting sightings of a “white wolf” prowling around the Margam area at night.

On each sighting people reported the animal looking more distressed and malnourished. Staff from the Dogs Trust’s Bridgend Rehoming Centre were so worried they went on a rescue mission and were shocked to find that the mysterious creature, dubbed the ‘beast of Margam’ by local residents, was in fact a beautiful white German Shepherd Dog.

Dante’s past remains a mystery, as he had no identification, but the charity says he is a friendly, lovable dog who deserves a good home, especially after his ordeal. To begin with the beautiful white dog was extremely nervous, particularly of men, but after a lot of attention and a good bath, newly named Dante proved to be a playful softie, and couldn’t be further from the image of the ‘Beast of Margam’. Staff at the Dogs Trust Bridgend Rehoming Centre believe that despite surviving on his own for so long, Dante once did live in a domestic environment as he has quickly became accustomed to human contact and knows the commands ‘sit’ and ‘paw’.

Beverley Price, Rehoming Centre Manager says:

“Dante is a beautiful and sweet dog, with lots of character and love to give. He has been through a lot, so I am very keen to find him a home as soon as possible. He is not surprisingly a little apprehensive when he first meets people, but after five minutes is your best friend, he will make a fantastic pet for someone.”
source
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One of my favorite stories along this line didn't happen to me, however I'll never forget it....

Seems this guy was one of the first ones to get one of the new beepers that had just come out, this was back before cell phones but had similar functions. He was very fond of his new toy, and said he strutted around feeling all important.

One day shortly after that, he was walking up onto someone's front porch and saw a huge hornet's nest in the upper corner. He cautiously approached it, walking carefully to avoid alarming the beasts, when, you guessed it...... the beeper at his side goes off on the 'vibrate' setting. :lol:

Just imagining him hopping around that porch is a constant source of amusement for me! (I know, I know!)

He said he prayed that none of the neighbors had seen him! :twisted:
 
Misperception - or cover-up?
Gas alert sparked by skunk spray

A strong "toxic smell" which led to the evacuation of two Mexican schools over gas leak fears turns out to have been produced by a skunk, officials say.
Security officers from the state-owned oil firm Pemex were called in to deal with the suspected leak in Nanchintal, in the eastern state of Veracruz.

Experts from the local petrochemical plant said they inspected the schools and gas pipelines but found no leak.

They said they had finally traced the smell to a skunk kept in a school lab.

However, the mayor of Nanchintal, a town of 28,000 inhabitants, accused Pemex of a cover-up.

The Tabasco Hoy newspaper quoted Francisco Leon Ocejo Meza as saying there had been a "toxic cloud" which he blamed on Pemex's activities.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4724908.stm
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Opened my living room window today to chase off some noisy pigeons. It's a dormer window, overlooking the main roof guttering, and glancing along the gutter I saw a condom lying there. No way could this have come up from the street, so it must have been thrown out of my neighbour's window.

Now he and I have had altercations in the past, so whether the condom was a deliberate gesture or just careless litterbugging I didn't know. I decided to retrieve the object and confront him with it. So I went to my kitchen window, which was nearer to the condom - and couldn't see it!

Back to the living room and looked again - what I'd thought was a condom was just the way the light was catching a join in the guttering!

:oops:
 
Seals spark ferry fiasco
By Stewart Payne
(Filed: 04/03/2006)

A huge rescue operation was launched in the English Channel yesterday after a ferry passenger mistook a pair of seals for passengers overboard.

Four cross-Channel ferries, two lifeboats, a coastguard cutter and an air-sea rescue helicopter searched for almost two hours before a head count on the P&O ferry, Pride of Calais, revealed that no one was missing.

The passenger raised the alarm after she thought she saw at least two people in the sea. Fellow passengers threw life jackets into the water.

Ferry crossings were delayed by two hours.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... xhome.html
 
I attend a weekly adult education evening class. One of the class members is a middle-aged woman who I shall refer to as 'Fierce Woman' and who invariably barks some supposedly amusing comment at me whenever we come face to face.

A couple of weeks ago, I arrived for the class to find the students huddled together in a group in the corridor as our classroom hadn't been unlocked. Among them was Fierce Woman. I stood slightly apart from the group and hoped that she wouldn't come over and start barking at me.

Once the classroom was unlocked and the class was underway, I noticed that Fierce Woman was missing. "Where's Fierce Woman," I asked the tutor.

"Probably taken the week off," he replied.

"No, I saw her out in the corridor just now," I said. "Unless I imagined it"

"Actually, now you come to mention it, I saw her as well," said the Tutor. "We can't both have imagined it. I expect she'll turn up sooner or later".

However, she didn't turn up, for the simple reason that she had taken the week off - as she explained when she arrived at class the next week.

So, not only had I imagined seeing someone who wasn't there, but I had also implanted a false memory in the Tutor's mind that he had seen her as well.
 
I was in my kitchen earlier watching TV, and out of the corner of my eye I could see my dog curled up in her usual position on the rug. We were the only ones in the house so I was quite shaken when I heard footsteps coming down the stairs all of a sudden. I leapt up to see who the intruder was and it was my dog! So what had I seen curled up in my kitchen? When I looked it was a black carrier bag!

It brought back many happy memories of the "black bag" cartoon in Viz.
 
Well, it seems that some people really are building working flying saucers in their garage!

It Came From the Planet Garage

The 3-foot hovering disks developed by two Orange County hobbyists have sparked a wave of 'flying saucer' reports to authorities.

By Lynn Doan, Times Staff Writer
March 18, 2006

Move over, Roswell. South Orange County is recording its own share of UFO sightings.

Several residents have reported sightings to the Orange County Sheriff's Department in recent months. And word has even reached a Canadian UFO researcher who has posted information about the incidents on his website.

In one case, witnesses reported seeing glowing disks zigzagging through trees and hovering above the Aliso Viejo Town Center at night. About a yard in diameter and studded with flashing lights, the four UFOs dance around one another in the night sky.

True enough, these flying saucers aren't a top-secret military project. But they aren't being piloted by Martians either.

The saucers are made in the garages of Gaylon Murphy and Steve Zingali, who get their kicks shocking people and hope to earn a few bucks hawking their remote-controlled saucers. After all, a few UFO sightings can only be good for business.

"We fly them in formation. It's pretty funny," said Murphy, a cardiovascular surgeon and Aliso Viejo resident. "People stop, people scream; one cabdriver ran his car up off the road."

Nick Peterson was stunned when he saw one of the disks fly past his girlfriend's upstairs apartment.

"I thought, that can't be a UFO, can it?" he said. "It's pretty weird."

The disks are made of foam and weigh about a pound. Each runs on a 7.4-volt lithium battery and has a propeller.

On weekends, Murphy flies the disks in Aliso Viejo, Newport Beach, Mission Viejo and Laguna Niguel.

He and Zingali, a facilities engineer and Mission Viejo resident, have sold four of the gizmos at $1,000 each and concede that their streaking light show is part hobby, part promotion.

"It's good marketing," he said.

The Canadian UFO website, which logs oddities from supposed saucer sightings to alleged alien abductions and offers an assortment of paranormal literature, indicates that the homemade disks have captured the attention — and the imagination — of both the skeptical and the true believer.

"I don't know how to say this exactly but … ," one San Clemente resident reported, before going on to detail his UFO sighting outside an Aliso Viejo movie theater in January.

"What I saw today had a brightness that was beautiful to see," another witness reported. One sky watcher said the object looked like a "glowing Nerf football."

Not everyone, however, is as enchanted.

The disks sparked a confrontation between Murphy and Erik Strong, a manager for Opah, an Aliso Viejo restaurant and bar. Strong said Murphy was spooking his staff by hovering his disk near the restaurant.

"It looked like something right out of a movie, a little too real," Strong said. "I wouldn't say I made the determination that they were actual UFOs, but it did pique my curiosity enough to see where it was coming from."

Strong followed the UFOs to nearby Grand Park, where Murphy and Zingali were standing with their remote controls. He told the pair they were going to create hysteria if they continued to fly their disks around Town Center.

Murphy told Strong he should be more concerned about his bar patrons getting rowdy. But the restaurant manager said he hadn't seen a disk since.

source
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graylien said:
Well, it seems that some people really are building working flying saucers in their garage!
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Don't tell Human84!

But perhaps you should post this in the UFO forum as well.
(Just as a reminder to 'believers' that there may be other explanations.)
 
I love detective stories, and the way the hero constructs the most elaborate theory from the tiniest physical clues.

But often in my own life I encounter odd little signs and wonder how a detective might interpret them if I were to become a murder victim (or even suspect!).

For instance, tonight there was a smear of blood on the outside of the top of my toilet bowl... :shock:


No doubt a fictional 'tec would have various ideas about how this might relate to any nearby crime...

But the facts are incredibly boring:

in the pub tonight, I picked off some loose skin on my finger, which began to bleed. It continued to bleed even after I reached home, despite having a plaster stuck round it. (I'm a right bleeder, me!)

So the blood dripped on to the toilet bowl when I went for a pee...!



But situations like this do make me worry about convictions based on 'forensic evidence'.
 
Ah, the significant detail! It's part of the charm of any mystery genre that insignificant things can be charged with life-and-death importance. So that a story that hinges on a nail-clipping can engage us much more readily than vapourings about the Meaning of Life. It's a notion that Antonioni thought he had hammered into the ground with Blow Up but - like Dracula and unlike Blow Up - it keeps coming back for sequels.

Of course real world detectives haven't yet got around to solving the rumours of an illegal circumcision clinic in Cornwall. They're too busy ignoring the whole bin-bags full of abandoned clothing which litter waste-ground everywhere. Now where did we leave that Missing People thread? :?
 
This is a very small misperception, not at all Fortean.

Texas's anti-litter campaign has the slogan "Don't Mess With Texas," which is popular because it plays to our perception of ourselves as macho belligerent types. One TV ad with the slogan showed litterers knocked unconscious with tranqulizer darts and carried across the border to Oklahoma, for instance. Anyway, crossing a parking lot this Monday I spotted a bumper sticker bearing this message inside a border of stars; however, due to the font, the angle, the light, etc., what I first read was: "Don't mess with Jesus!"

The thing is, you could sell this. Jesus is a popular figure on bumper stickers, though my own favorite - "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" is atypical.
 
Today I loaded some pics, taken on Sunday, onto the computer.

One was this view of St Just-in-Penwith (where Jethro comes from!)

IMG_1613.jpg



As you see, the pic is taken in bright June sunshine.

But when I zoomed into it, I was surprised to see this ghoulish figure...


Ghoul1.jpg



What the heck is that? :shock:




But after tweaking the brightness and contrast quite a bit, the ghoul became somewhat more human:

Ghoul2.jpg


Still maybe not someone you'd like to meet down a dark alley at night, but at least (probably) human! 8)



This just goes to show that even in perfect lighting conditions, cameras can still throw up apparent anomalies.


(Here, the brightness and contrast that was about right for the overall picture was not right for that particular figure against that particular background.)
 
I hope you are not suggesting that people could misperceive what the truthful camera has seen? Gosh! Sounds like a brain problem to me :lol:
 
GadaffiDuck said:
I hope you are not suggesting that people could misperceive what the truthful camera has seen? Gosh! Sounds like a brain problem to me :lol:
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Whose brain?

Yours or mine? 8)
 
That person is still a bit off, and is in stark comparison with the woman in shorts. What is he wearing on his head? A fur hood?
 
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