Recent reading: The Phoenix Lights

The Phoenix Lights: A Skeptic's Discovery That We Are Not Alone
Lynne D. Kitei
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"On March 13, 1997 something extra-ordinary happened in the skies over Phoenix and across Arizona. On that clear evening a parade of low flying, mile wide V-shaped formations of orbs and craft glided silently overhead, attracting the attention of at least 10,000 people."

Dr. Kitei was one of them, and her curiosity led her to investigate the truth of the event. Her journey, detailed in this book, does one thing very well and another not so well. The strength of her book is the investigation itself, concluding that the event is an "UP," unexplained phenomenon. No explanation, including the official one of government flares, satisfactorily explains the facts of the event and the testimony of thousands of witnesses. Indeed "visitation of ETs" ends up being as good an explanation as anything else. Surely something strange and wondrous happened for all to see. But what? 


When Dr. Kitei starts speculating about what, beyond a general statement of "visitation," is when she loses me. Whereas her investigation reflects her scientific training and is measured, reasoned and careful, in the latter part of her book the doctor turns into a cheerleader for New Age optimism, deciding that these visitations are to save us all (from ourselves, of course), and that the universe is just one big happy family. Apparently she hasn't seen the TV series "V" that offers a different perspective on galactic visitation, and there's no particular reason why one version is more believable than the other. Indeed, if we live in a zero-sum universe, all the cheer and good tidings from the good doctor must be matched with a comparable part of negativity. 


So this is two books in one, the first a stellar argument for the mystery of the Phoenix lights and their probable other-worldly origin, the second a Galactic Better Business Bureau version of boosterism at its worst. The book is worth reading for the first half.