Sue St.Clair and Matthew Didier's Paranormal Blog

I've been trying to figure out why I'm getting so much attention from certain political stripes when, to be quite frank, I'm really neither one nor the other...

...then it came to me...

My username on most forums and whatnot has always been "Inconvenient Facts"... I've been using it since 2002... long before Al Gore made a movie about something I actually believe in and take quite seriously, global warming and green house gas emissions. To be honest there too, it wasn't Al Gore nor any "post-Y2K" pundit that alerted me to these things, but Dr. David Suzuki who was talking about this many moons ago.

"Inconvenient Facts" in my case is not a shot at Mr. Gore's film... but an homage to the late Karl Pflock's book named "Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe" which is about the possible UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico.

Pflock felt that too many in the Ufological community were ignoring "the truth" in their quest to "believe" and therefore jumping to erroneous conclusions... which, in the case of Roswell, MIGHT be the truth... I'm really not qualified to say... BUT I can say that 99 out of 100 "ghost folks" out there do indeed ignore "inconvenient facts" to support their belief... of course, at the detriment of being taken seriously by anyone with an I.Q. greater than a ping-pong ball.

I, being a great spoiler AND a legitimate sceptic (read: I doubt, but do not deny,) LOVE and enjoy pointing out "Inconvenient Facts" to people... showing them the flaws... which, as you can imagine, irritates many to no end.

This is not to say that I'm particularly mean about things... not at all... but if you state something that I know doesn't stand up to scientific or historical scrutiny as "fact", I'm gonna take you to task.

Call it not-so-subtle peer review.

You present something publicly... I invoke the "Inconvenient Facts" regarding it (if they exist)... You rebut or change your views... or I re-rebut or change my views.

In a perfect scenario, everyone comes out better and smarter. If I'm wrong, I learn something new... if I'm right, hopefully the other party learns something new.

Sadly, this is NOT the case most times... most times, the opposite number decries and otherwise is angered by me because... well, allow me to quote the venerable late Mr. Pflock again...

Paranormal study...

"...is beset by True Believers ('They must be, therefore they are!') and True Unbelievers ('They can't be, therefore they aren't!') Rare are those who pursue evidence wherever it may lead, no matter how the results may square with their cherished hopes and dreams. Ironically, both the TBists and the TUists see themselves as champions of objective analysis and critical thinking, when in fact they are defenders of their respective faiths and, not incidentally, their egos."

...and herein lies the problem... and boy do I agree with these sentiments.

Reading his writings, Pflock knew the one truth that no one should argue... People experience weird things. This is not in question or in doubt... it's the causation of these weird things that's the key to understanding them... and we, as investigators and researchers cannot allow ourselves to be locked into a single hypothesis simply because our limited philosophy or even our faith will not allow us to look into all possibilities... in other words, "WE" cannot ignore the inconvenient facts just because we don't like them.

In my studies, I have found that major breakthroughs and epiphanies only happen when we look into things from an agnostic and neutral standpoint... the minute we skew it with our personal faith and philosophies, then we taint the truth.

...and realistically, the truth is where we hope to end up at, right?

Not your truth... not my truth... just THE truth.

So, no, my username on forums does NOT denote a mocking-disbelief in global warming or greenhouse gas... sorry to say to those who believe it does as I firmly believe we are damaging our environment and we do need to act. I'm NOT a believer in the "worst case scenario", but I do understand that we do need to do something... and every little bit helps.