"I wholeheartedly agree with the White House. Carry on."

​The White House has officially responded to a petition signed by 12,078 people calling for the government to "formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race." The Office of Science & Technology Policy's Phil Larson wrote a post on the White House website titled, "Searching for ET, But No Evidence Yet." Larson categorically denies that the US has evidence of extraterrestrial life, but his response raises more questions than it answers. For example, what kind of alien name is "Phil Larson?"

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The above video of a supposed "UFO Mothership" over London was posted onto YouTube Monday and has already garnered over two million hits. It briefly captures a group of glowing lights passing by overhead and is similar to another popular UFO video shared months ago from Jerusalem. Whether you believe in extraterrestrial life or not, one thing is certain: Adding comments has been disabled for this video.

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​The mischief-making hacker group Anonymous is out to "convince the world" that UFOs exist -- "for nothing more than the lulz," or laughs -- in a new plan meant to assert elitism over stupid people. "Operation UFO" is simple enough: at 8 p.m. on May 22, everyone in on the idea and willing is supposed to report a similar UFO sighting ("a triangle of about 8 yellow lights in the sky") to whichever sighting website or hotline they so choose. Because believers want nothing more than validation, the rash of identical reports is supposed send UFO enthusiasts into a frenzy. Anonymous, then, gets to grin and look down at those they fooled. Full flier after the jump.

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UFO! Or...something.

​Queens Crap alerts us to this rather entertaining local newscast from Fox. It seems that Brooklyn man Phil DePaolo happened upon an intriguing, mysterious blue light in the sky above Williamsburg while walking his dog on Sunday night, and, of course, filmed it and put the clip on YouTube, because that is what people do! The most amusing part of this clip is Rosanna Scotto's suspicion that DePaolo had to have been drunk, showing her outright ignorance regarding the types of "lights in the sky" one sees while drinking.

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"Doughnut" over Sri Lanka

​The British National Archives just released about 8,500 pages of UFO reports that date back to the 1950s. What do these long-classified files tell us? Was Stonehenge planted by extraterrestrials? Is Dr. Who based on real events? Is Kate Middleton a Species-like creature who will spear Prince William with her razor-sharp alien tongue when they kiss after saying, "I do?" Let's take a look!

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There's the bastard!

​Multiple videos of a supposed UFO hovering above Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock appeared on YouTube in late January, and plenty of people thought these were the most compelling cases for the existence of extraterrestrial life ever found. Benjamin Radford, "veteran investigator of many UFO photos and videos," argues that "these images [are] highly dubious, and all signs point to a hoax." So it's settled; Benjamin Radford is an alien.

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​No, you weren't seeing things -- there really was a strange light in the sky that had people buzzing across the five boroughs Saturday night. And no, we weren't neuralized by the Men in Black and instructed to lie about what we saw, just to spoil your fun (at least as far as we know).

The truth is that while reports came in fast and furious over the weekend about UFOs over New York City, that strange light was, in fact, a NASA experiment -- the test of something called the Black Brant XII Suborbital Sounding Rocket. Researchers say it was launched to study high cloud formations around the Earth.

The various conspiracy theories begin in 3... 2... 1...

Democratic mayoral wannabe Anthony Weiner, the beanpole congressman from the outer boroughs, came out swinging this morning against his would-be rival, Michael Bloomberg. But after taking some tough shots, Weiner promptly went into a rope-a-dope crouch, saying that he didn't want to start campaigning yet -- and wishes the mayor well.

 Before he declared a cease fire, Weiner had this to say at a Citizens Union breakfast at NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service about the two-term mayor:

--Bloomberg's New York "seems to be controlled by the elite and the powerful."

--The deal that gave Bloomberg the right to seek a third-term was the product of "the business elite, together with major publishers who became virtual arms of City Hall."

--Under the mayor, the city's Conflicts of Interest Board -- which gave an all-clear for the term limits vote by the City Council -- has been "asleep at the switch."

--Developers hold such sway with the administration  that "no one has said no" to them in years.

--The administration has been so is stuck in an "old fashioned way of thinking" that it let debt and city expenses soar while revenues rose.

--Bloomberg has added 13 percent more city employees. "It's as if we hired all of Middle Village (Queens)."

--The administration is continuing to pour money into Yankee Stadium even though the team doesn't need it. "Enough is enough," said Weiner of the proposed extra $370 million in tax-free bonds that Bloomberg wants to give to the Yankees later this week.

After he got through blasting Bloomberg's reign, Weiner added that "the correct time to campaign against the Mayor is not now," suggesting that voters want a break from electoral politics after the long presidential campaign.

Then, in response to reporters'' questions, the congressman went after pensions and health care for city workers, suggesting that "future employees should pay more for health care" and that "defined benefit pension plans are not going to be around much longer."

There goes that Municipal Labor Council endorsement!

 

Got a call today from James Fox, some guy who’s been making money peddling confusion about the Phoenix Lights, and who made an appearance on NBC’s recent show, “10 Close Encounters Caught on Tape.” He noticed that I’d written some fairly skeptical things about the Lights in this blog.

His claim to fame, apparently, is that he talked disgraced former Arizona Governor Fife Symington into admitting that he, too, saw the famous “vee” formation of the 1997 Phoenix Lights, and got Symington to admit that he still wonders what he saw. (Since my newspaper at the time, the Phoenix New Times, helped bump Symington from office over a bank scandal, I can imagine that the former governor didn’t get around to reading my reporting on the ‘vee’ that appeared in our paper—the vee turned out to be a high-flying formation of airplanes, as spotted by a man with a large telescope.)

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