How Not to Find a UFO

I sat through an episode of UFO Hunters last night. Mostly because it was a local story about UFOs around Catalina Island. Unidentfied Flying Objects and the new rage, Unidentified Submerged Objects (USOs). I'd love to see some proof of alien visitors, really. But the evidence is just so minimal. Some guy said he saw something, so they find some other guy who saw something. Zzz. Most of the episode was a searching for a sunken Piper Cherokee supposedly downed by a USO. They didn't find it. And rather than admit that it can take years to find a small wreck, their conclusion was that the plane "might have been moved by the aliens." I don't know long they were searching. It's essentially a treasure hunt, and such shows are notoriously short on measurable data. It looked like they spent maybe two days looking. Maybe just one. The expected result is: NOT finding anything. And of course they rolled their eyes at the skeptic at the end, and ran the credits in a hurry. Proving nothing. Please don't be fooled by this stuff. It's just entertainment.

Odd fact: Both the History Channel and the SciFi Channel have shows in production called "UFO Hunters." the History Channel one is a spinoff of a 2005 one-off show called "UFO Hunters" and the SciFi one is a spin off of "Ghost Hunters." A post on BoingBoing.net said they were both trying to trademark the name & concept ... like you can really own a name. Still, two TV shows with the same name -- unlikely! Representatives of UFO Hunters duking it out in court (probably in expensive suits) -- also unlikely.

Personal oddity: I once got tricked into driving someone to a UFO Society meeting because I thought she had said "USO" -- she was about 50, and I thought she had a military husband, so the United Service Organization was what I figured. Nope. UFOs. It was a weird gathering; the people all picked apart each other's UFO stories while defending their own, and there was a lecture on ancient astronauts that presented perfectly reasonable "establishment" ideas and laughed at them, based on next to nothing. Anyway ... during this "UFO Hunters" story about USOs, who should advertise but the USO! Really -- they showed an aircraft hanger full of people preparing care packages for our troops! I couldn't believe my eyes. Unlikely ... or just mistakenly targeted advertising?