Dr. Mitchell Wants To Believe

Where do you go after you've been to the moon and back? In Dr. Edgar Mitchell's case, you go a little nutty. First of all, you have to hand it to a guy who accomplishes all that is necessary to become a pioneering astronaut. Dr. Mitchell took part in the longest moonwalk in history on the Apollo 14 mission and was smart enough to earn his doctorate in Aeronautics and Astronautics. Now at the age of 77, he's grabbing headlines (and the adoration of UFO zealots) with the astonishing claim that, yes, it turns out aliens are real and have visited us frequently (which vindicates Dr. Laibow from the last post). As sci-fi films have been trying to tell us for years, the aliens are indeed small, strange-looking beings with large eyes and possess superior technology. I guess it would have been anti-climactic if they looked like your overweight neighbor or John Tesh (now he's off the hook as well). So there you have it. The decades old government cover-up is over. We will now need to devote resources to new considerations, such as: should they learn English, or will we be obligated to have services available in alien-ese? Should our little friends be screened for infectious alien diseases before they are allowed to mingle freely among us? What sort of carbon emissions do their spacecrafts give off? And, Dr. Rima Laibow wants to know, what about reparations (or at least an official apology) for all those abductions and 'probes' inflicted on innocent earthlings over the years?

But wait. Before you break out the Klingon dictionary, let's do some poking around. Besides excelling in a profession dictated by hard science, Dr. Mitchell has always been drawn to the paranormal. He conducted ESP experiments with friends back on earth while he was in space. Not long after his return, he founded the Institute for Noetic Sciences, devoted to the study of consciousness and psychic phenomena. Several years ago he claimed that he was cured of kidney cancer by a teenage 'remote-healer' (although the cancer was never confirmed by the standard testing). Regarding his alien claims, he has never actually seen any evidence first-hand, but has it on good authority from unnamed sources who are now, um...deceased. Sorry UFO-buffs, just pull your warp drives back to sub-light speed, because this isn't quite the smoking phaser you were hoping for. But we are still Not Alone...we have each other.