Very hot but down to work

Dear readers,

The Bureau of Meteorology forecast for my home city of Melbourne today was for a maximum of 35 degrees Celsius. It is currently sitting on 37.7 degrees. So, with the kids in the swimming pool I have had some time to work on this blog post.

Firstly, a word about my style of writing blog posts. As an academic I write papers for publication in refereed professional journals all the time. So for this blog I'd like to adopt a much lighter tone, sometimes even humorous (my sense of humour is legendary at work and at home.) Above all I aim to provide factual information, and be readable. My initial perspective will be that of someone reactivating a dormant interest (which of course is true.)

As my blog profile states, I enjoy watching science fiction movies. A recent favourite was 'Passengers' - highly recommended as a love story set on an almost 100 year long interstellar trip. On the other (serious) hand I retain an interest in hard science - keeping up with developments in astronomy particularly in the area of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Well today I have started to look around at today's UFOlogy, by reading a number of websites. The current range of views is very broad indeed. In one place I read the views of individuals who believe they are 'star seeds' - part human, part alien. In another place people recount their solid belief in the existence of reptilian creatures who abduct humans. Elsewhere, there are collections of individuals sharing accounts of their nightly sky watches - and the 'UFOs' they regularly see. Buried amongst all this are 'scientific ufologists' providing hard data and analysis.

It's going to take me a while to digest everything on my UFO search 'menu.' I guess I am on the entrée course at the moment.

I'll look to publish a weekly post, probably each Sunday.

Must away, my youngest is hungry from all the pool work out!