First Contact, Cincy Style?

Feb 2, 2012 by Ben Sherman

I’ve said previously that I love learning new things about this city. I was born and raised here, so I always feel like there isn’t ton that I wouldn’t have heard or seen before. I’ve been humbled once again, though; this time by Citybeat with this piece on a rash of UFO sightings in the Queen City and all through southwest Ohio in October, 1973. They apparently caused quite a stir and got a fair bit of press:

The Cincinnati police told The Cincinnati Post their phones were “ringing off the hook” nightly about those strange bright lights in the sky. Cincinnati Police said “a mess” of frightened callers saw something just above the tree-tops around Mount Washington, Bond Hill and 14th and Vine, and that some type of machine had landed on the railroad tracks near the 2500 block of Beekman Street.

 

North of the city, in Trenton, some of the townsfolk swore a flying craft of some sort, not from around these parts, landed on Main Street, right in the middle of town. The town of Reading kept going dark due to power outages officials said were due to “equipment failure.”

 

The United Press International reported hundreds of sightings over southwest Ohio; all of them were at night. A woman, hysterical and screaming, cried to police that “some … some … thing” landed in her farm and killed two cows. Near central Ohio, a U.S. Army helicopter had been zapped in mid-air with a green beam of light. And The Enquirer was also on the beat, writing about “a radiancy of lights, frights and brights,” that were “dancing, flashing and hovering,” and “the reports were fast and they were serious.”

 

In Greenfield, police officer Sgt. Hugh, after chasing for several miles a circular white object with a yellow glow that was humming and flying just above the trees, told The Post, “I’ve never believed in UFOs until tonight.”

 

Indeed, even the Governor of Ohio, John J. Gilligan, had a close call with what he said was an amber-colored “vertical beam of light.” Shaken, he felt compelled to tell America during an emotional press conference that the UFO threat was real. “I saw one (UFO) the other night, so help me. I’m absolutely serious. I saw this.”

Now, the article goes on to (mostly) explain the incidents as a result of the kickoff of the military’s Operation Nickel Grass on October 13th. The US had elected to aid Israel in the Yom Kippur war, which meant a massive airlift effort, which meant that tremendously oversized cargo planes were landing at and taking off from Wright-Patterson AFB pretty constantly. If that’s not a good enough explanation for you, it’s also a fairly simple deduction that anyone with the technology to get from there (read: anywhere out there) to here in a reasonable amount of time would probably not have much reason to make a stop anywhere near such a comparatively backwater civilization. If you want an example of what I mean, just try to come up with an interesting conversation piece for a chance meeting with a real, live Neanderthal, and then expand the technology gap between the two of you by many orders of magnitude. In other words, Ug would probably figure out how to use an iPad a long time before we were able to wrap our brains around the physics of efficient interstellar travel.

Still, I suppose that anything is technically possible, so I’m forced to wonder exactly what would happen in Cincy if the proverbial Little Green Men did just pop the hatch on Fountain Square and ask to see our leaders. Ah, I can see the potential headlines on Cincinnati.com now…….

• FIRST CONTACT IN FOUNTAIN SQUARE: COAST points out that they’ve avoided Over-the-Rhine
• Mike Brown to demand alien assistance in renovating Paul Brown Stadium
• Aliens: “Hey, uh, we just came to pick Bootsy back up…”
• INTERSTELLAR INCIDENT: Aliens allege attempted poisoning, via goetta
• Aliens lost attempting to navigate West Side roads
• BREAKING: Aliens did not attend high school in the Cincinnati area
• UFOs attack and disable WEBN studios, citing “interstellar noise pollution”
• Aliens return Clooney: “Sorry, with all the attention, we just figured he was in charge.”
• Aliens….. shop at Furniture Fair? (ah %&&$%$#&%, another ad?!?!? Seriously?!?!?!?!)

(N.B.: This piece of playful fun-poking was also indirectly inspired by  this video, S____ People Say in Cincinnati, which you should watch if you haven’t already; it is priceless, though technically NSFW)

Image Credit: Some rights reserved by Pedro Moura Pinheiro

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A Very Geeky Xmas To All!

Dec 22, 2010 by Loki

Since this is my second winter here in the land of snow I’ve decided to bring a tradition from back home into play. Namely trotting out the most truly a tradition of  demented holiday videos. Since most of our team are die hard Dr. Who fans an obvious theme suggests itself….

Lets start with The Go Gos, not THOSE Go Gos but the original ones from the 1960s.

Then we have the current cast of the show regaling us with a christmas carol (I suspect a bit of eggnog was involved with this one):

As things get uglier how could we possibly skip the Dalek Christmas Album:

Lastly here is the trailer for this year’s Dr. Who Christmas Special, which will be simulcast in the US for the first time ever on BBC America at 9pm Xmas night. Looks like Stephen Moffat is getting old school for this one.

So there you go. From all of us on the CincyVoices team to all of you I’d like to extend our best holiday wishes! No matter which mid-winter celebration you embrace we wish you the best one possible!

Happy Chauna-Rama-Kwanza-Solsti-Mas!

-Loki, Founder, Curator, and Major Geek

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What Do You Mean, “Social” Media?

Oct 4, 2010 by Nathan

“Do you ever put that phone down?” “Are you Twittering again?”

These are questions I am familiar with. Usually asked at a dinner where the dialogue is lively, the good food is abundant and the wine is flowing. And like instinct, it beckons. As if some force suddenly animates my body for me, I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. Immediately I’m taking pictures, touchscreen-tapping away, head turned down in a blank un-blinking gaze at the glowing vice in front of my nose. When confronted with these questions – usually after the full minute of silence from the head of hair staring back at my dinner companions – I presume their words enter my ears and eventually reach my brain, where a tiny blip of self-control appears and disappears at the same moment in a microscopic fizzle, the byproduct of which is expelled from my lips in a mumbling guffaw, trying desperately to resemble a somewhat intelligent response. In this thing normal, healthy homosapiens have collectively agreed to refer to as a Human Conversation, my eyes have never blinked, despite the chemical reaction happening directly behind them, and this physiological response has been unable to alter the flow of undoubtedly useful information rocketing from my brain cells to my fingers, translating those bytes of data into thumb spasms, performing their dutiful expression on a bright digital keyboard:

“im gonna eat the crap outta this chicken, yo lolz”

Hit send. Pure poetry.

Satisfied at my soliloquy, I return my phone to its resting place and gaze upon the empty table in front of me, as my guests have certainly left hours ago. In fact, I think the restaurant’s closed.

I have no doubt this is exactly what happens. In moments like these, what force is it that navigates my body, telling me that internet conversations are more important than the actual conversations happening right in front of me? I wondered out loud “could I actually control it? Is it ADD? ADHD? Stupidity?” Clearly all of the above. So after one or two episodes similar to this not-so-exaggerated story, I decided to take a week off to test my discipline. No Twitter. No Facebook. No Phone. No Internet.

Now before you go and shout “BORING!!!” or “SIMPSONS DID IT!”… I know. Of course it is. It’s been done. This is stupid…. but then again it isn’t. It depends on you as a person, no? Some people do multiple things at once, be the effortless multitasker, juggling puppies and swords while reciting War and Peace from memory. On stilts. On a treadmill. (anything else?) Then there’s me: while typing, I get distracted from the letter N by how cool the letter M is. So for me, naturally, trying to carry on a conversation while a.) watching anything on the TV, b.) reading anything on a page, or c.) holding my iPhone, is an attention-loss guarantee. Some people can do it. I can’t. Also, I lack discipline, and I needed to see if this would “cure” my procrastination.

Planning ahead, I decided to test my habit-breaking skills on a Monday to Monday schedule. This would give me a full work week and full weekend to see if my lifestyle was altered. When Monday finally came around, I noticed how drastically it affected my morning routine. Usually the first thing I reach for in the morning is my iPhone to check my news alerts and RSS feeds, and of course say something profound on Facebook or Twitter like “good morning!” or “RT if you hate mondayz lol rofl bbq”. This is usually followed up at work with a more thorough scouring of news and commenting on local blogs and articles, but mostly sharing on the Networks, with my morning coffee. These were the most difficult habits to break: reaching for my phone, and opening web browsers in the morning. I also found I had to turn off notifications on my phone and email, as they informed me of social mentions and news.

So there I went. And believe it or not, I didn’t break out in a cold sweat, shuddering in a corner. By Wednesday, I didn’t even miss it. I found myself frequently hearing something, and thinking “oh man, that needs to go on Twitter!”, but then I remembered my commitment and purposefully forgot it. More than that, I really, really had a hard time refusing to visit my regular news pages. In retrospect, I believe I lost whole minutes devoted to making myself not instinctively switch over to Google Reader. I know. It’s sad. I recognized exactly what I was addicted to: not people… but information. I’m  an information junkie. A knowledge junkie. I just gotta know.

Here’s the other thing I noticed about me:  at the office I found other ways to screw around and avoid doing things, but I did work at home… just on things I wanted to. I got more done on my backyard in one week than I had in the whole previous month. So I wouldn’t conclude that Twitter & Facebook affect my work performance… because I have a fundamental issue doing other people’s work. I also noticed that I can’t commit to personal goals. When Sunday came around, and I considered breaking my fast early because it was so soon till it ended, a gentle nudge from my wife reaffirmed me… and that bugged me that it was needed. What if no one was there to do that for me? Even though it’s stupid, and not a problem for most people: to me it was and is, and I don’t want it to control me.

Some final  thoughts (because I want to keep this short): we live in an amazing time in history; technology has allowed us to involve people in our exchange, even though they’re not physically there. I take my virtual conversations seriously, because usually I’m talking to people I know and love, just like you at the table in front of me. So I don’t feel bad in the least taking a second to share what I feel’s important with my other friends. More often than not, I’m with people who are doing the same thing too, usually with mutual friends. I think it’s pretty damn cool.

But please: slap me across the head if I start to drool, because my brain’s probably come dislodged again.

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The Chicken Dance – Dr Who Style

Jun 24, 2010 by Loki

I’m a geek, pure and simple. I work online, I love science fiction, I’m a huge fan of technology and I watch Dr. Who.

Purely by chance this afternoon I stumbled across this extremely silly video and felt the undeniable urge to share it with all of my fellow geeks here in Cincinnati. The Doctor Who Chicken Dance.  It works on another level as well: the Doctor has a fine tradition of broadcast and fans here in the Queen City. Just check out this archived article from Cincinnati Magazine back in 1987- The Magnetic Dr.Who.

I know it ends with Happy Easter, oh well. It’s still a hugely amusing piece of work. So, without further ado, The Doctor Who Chicken Dance

This one goes out to Yottaquest Fantasy Gaming, The Southwestern Ohio Gathering of Gamers, CincyCon, Sci-Fi City, The Sci-FiCincinnati Book Club, and all of my other fellow geeks in the Queen City!

-Loki, Founder and Publisher

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