like the 1947 spike after kenneth arnold when 800 people came forward with alien stories. the likelihood that these trends, all of them certainly -- all of a sudden being from venus or mars followed verifiable truth, especially when you can't follow up with physical evidence, is certainly problematic. >> certainly, and it is inscribed into the name, they are literally called unidentified flying objects. the problem is all of these conspiracies are trying to inscribe them with meaning, or trying to identify something that is by definition unidentified. and so we do reach that same kind of point of crisis of knowing, as we have been talking about, that epistemological crisis, that rumsfeldian mantra, that we were talking about on tuesday, that there are these known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, things that you don't know that you don't know. those are what will allow ufo conspiracies and to be so extensive. once you move away from the strictures of any physical evidence, pretty much anything is going to come into play. but still, the fact that there is this w