Flying brown thing: reports released

In the UK, the Ministry of Defence has just made UFO-related military documents available on the internet. For example, one report by airliner pilots that said a brown missile-shaped object overtook them in the sky. As we all know, there’s only one proper place for brown, missile-shaped objects, and flying through the air isn’t it. Unless you’re a chimpanzee.

This report, amongst others, has given ammunition to various conspiracy theorists, who love to claim that governments cover up alien encounters. I’ve always wondered why people think the government would do that. What could possibly be their motivation? Are they worried the aliens will vote for the Opposition? Do they want to stop these aliens from coming in and stealing our jobs? Are they trying to save the religious from yet another blow to their increasingly tenuous and disproven belief structure? Wouldn’t the government realise that ‘the universe’ is a difficult thing to cover up?

I guess one reason might be to use the alien technology for secret military applications, but I’ll believe that the day I see soldiers getting beamed into Iraq.

The thing is, UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object, and means just that. A report of a brown flying object doesn’t necessarily mean alien, it just means there was something weird in the sky. Lots of weird things could be in the sky.

For example, I could mash up some potato and carve it into the shape of a garden gnome, stick flowers in its head and bake it until it was hard, then fling it off a bridge. I bet that to the people sailing their boats under the bridge, that would be appear as an unidentified object flying through the air. It would take someone with extraordinary vision to be able to work out it was a gnome sculpted of mashed potato with flowers baked onto it, before it smashed into their boat. Then they might cry out ‘Why in God’s good name would someone hurl a mashed potato gnome at us? What a totally random attack!’ but by then the object would no longer count as flying.

At this stage I have to admit, I’m not quite sure what my point is. I guess maybe I have duel points, and they can be summarised thusly:

1) Governments aren’t as smart as theory conspiracy theorists give them credit for, and;
2) 240 degrees for an hour or so in a standard oven is sufficient time to really harden up a mashed potato gnome.