Bad Astronomy

Shocker: alien video is useless

Sigh.

Jeff Peckman stood before the citizens of Denver and showed the video. What it had on it we don’t know, because he would only allow certain members of the press to see it, and no video of his video was allowed to be taken. Evidently, Peckman is part of the Bush Administration.

Anyway, his video was supposed to show an alien looking in a bedroom window. He said it would have cost thousands of dollars and take a Hollywood studio to fake it. However, members of the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Society were able to create a fake video in a few hours and for under $100, which looks “slightly more animated” than the real thing. That’s according to someone who saw both, writing for the Rocky Mountain News (link above).

The fake video is all over YouTube already, and of course some people are claiming it’s the real thing. It’s not. Below are stills from the real footage and the hoaxed one (well the admitted hoax). The one on the left is from Peckman’s footage (posted on the Rocky Mountain News site), the one on the right is the claimed hoax.

The differences are obvious – most notably the shape of the head, and the mullions (crossbars) in the window. Now go to YouTube and watch the footage people are claiming is the real thing.

Oops. It’s the known hoax.

So where are we? We have a video few people have seen, a claim it couldn’t be easily faked, proof it could be easily faked, and the fake video being claimed as the real one on the ‘net.

Still with me?

The dumbosity of this is climbing faster than even I thought it could. One thing is clear to me, though: Jeff Peckman is very, very good at wasting peoples’ time. And people are only too too happy to throw it at him.

And now here I am, taking ten minutes to write this, and that’s ten minutes I’ll never get back. Feh.