The Picture That Never Was , And Aliens That May Be

There is now an app that allows you to remove unwanted persons from your photos.
Not exactly news, but it got me thinking.
We live in a time that seems obsessed with correcting and retouching images.
I know this, because I get that twinge of discomfort whenever someone posts old photos where I'm usually looking awkward, and the ability to retouch, rendering everything just right, would be great!
Add to this, the endless variety of software to retouch images / add retro filters etc, and , voila!
When is a fake picture a real picture ?
When it's online, of course!
I remember reading a thread that discussed a black and white photo in an old magazine which had shown a group of men proudly standing around a downed pterodactyl . It was an old black and white photo, taken somewhere in the U.S.A
For years I was an avid collector of The Fortean Times and similar publications which might feature such a picture and after reading this piece, I became convinced that I had seen the actual photograph. The only question was which back issue ?
I searched through every issue, but no sign of such a picture.

One of a few photos of cowboys and pterodactyl

 Although I never found the actual photo, I am still convinced that I saw it.
Except that now I question whether I actually read such an article .
Anyway, this thread re-ignited my interest, and I promptly went online.
The resulting swathe of black/white images of old - western style images of men with a pterodactyl took me by surprise.
At first I felt vindicated.
Then came the doubt.
After all, these were surely fake.
But then why would anyone go to so much trouble posing / faking elaborate images of cowboys with a dead pterodactyl ?
By this time, my questioning mind had broken free of its real world shackles and now I was convinced that there really had been an incident out in the isolated deserts of the USA, where a group of hunters had managed to down a 'Thunderbird ', a missing link from prehistory.
It showed me how easy it is to fall for online reality.
The old adage that 'the camera never lies' is not true.
In some ways it never was, and photographic trickery is as old as the hills.

George Meliés

The difficult thing is that  we now live in the age of social media, with pictures taken as proof of places visited or deeds done - and yet, we also have increasingly sophisticated manipulation of images .
I think it's true to a degree that people are becoming more skilled at spotting photographic fakery, as 'Photoshopped' becomes a verb.
The internet has its own (n)etiquette, and linguistics - Lolcats, memes, selfies and suchlike.
On the one hand, it would seem that in the online world, people just want to be in control of their own image, but is there more to it ?
Is this all part of a merging between the worlds of human and machine?
Is our perception adjusting to fit ?

Earlier today I read of the 'self-awareness' computer being anticipated for 2049 , which sounds remarkably self-assured.
How can such a fixed date be asserted for something which is surely open to external influence ?
What if we are aided by an alien race who arrive before then, perhaps even driven by such self-aware technology, keen to impart its benefits to us ?
After all, despite being isolated in this far flung corner of the Milky Way, 6 billion living beings is a worthy sea of converts.

What if there were no such intervention and the whole thing was a promotion for a series of trashy robot overlord movies ?
That would be depressing.
Although, I'd expect robot 'movies' to have evolved by then, perhaps becoming multi-sensory VR driven 'experiences', the sort of thing depicted in 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale'
The human mind plays tricks, and memories are easily fabricated or warped.
All it takes is a photograph.


This weeks interstellar news was the alleged discovery of what appear to be alien artefacts surrounding a star which is a mere 1500 light years distant.
It's intriguing also because it is one of 150,000 stars being examined for unusual traits by citizen scientists .
It is also the only one of the 150,000 stars which is dimming in such a strange fashion (something is occasionally obscuring 20% of light from the star)
Many have declared the object a 'Dyson' sphere , much to the consternation of the physicist responsible for the theory (and possibly the copyright holder of the bagless vacuum cleaners.)
Without getting embroiled in the theory, it could result in a visit from aliens.*

 The discovery has prompted calls for further exploratory assessment  via the Very Large Array  in Mexico, and time has been booked in January to point it in the direction of the star named VIC 8462852,in a search for the sort of radio signals which may indicate an advanced technological race of beings at work.
The next set of info should emerge in January 2016, when the requested pointing of the VLA may give us further insight.

Meanwhile, back in our own solar system...

Pluto - pits and streaks, each one is hundreds of metres long!

NASA made a recent announcement of the latest downloads from Pluto.
After what must seem like a millenia being neglected in the darkest , most distant corner of our solar system, Pluto is enjoying a moment in the spotlight!
Okay, so maybe I'm being over enthusiastic, but I am happy, as it plays into the other revelations of subsurface oceans, and dynamic geography apparent on other bodies in the solar system.
Like many others, I am guilty of being uninspired by memories of crudely drawn and dull coloured images of planets from childhood text books.
Infact, the only planetary information which I found interesting tended to be about the comparative scale of the worlds, and the incredible distances involved in any attempt to travel there, so the current glut of space exploration is pure joy!

* Hardcore trivia for conspiracy believers: the physicist who came up with the theory of Dyson spheres was Freeman Dyson. 
Freeman is the surname of the scientist / protagonist in the popular computer game Half-Life, involved in battling with a race of aliens who enter this world through a space portal...
Dyson is a popular bagless vacuum cleaner brand.
Thank you.

Postscript Addendum: 

Apologies for the 'scrappy' nature of this posting, it's been giving me technical headaches for some obscure reason, with whole swathes of material vanishing without even backup to refer to, requiring tedious rewrites and guesswork. 
Hopefully issues will be resolved - also, please feel free to send feedback on any aspect of this blog. It's lonely out here!