It’s probably among those pursuits that simply require the ability to fog a mirror. I doubt if that has to be notarized or even witnessed. Hearsay should suffice.
Are you sure it’s certified, as compared to certifiable?
It’s the anal probing that does it. The wildness of the hair is in inverse relation to the amount of lube used.
I wonder the same thing about the “experts” CNN and other newstainment outlets trot out to comment on the story du jour. Who are these people?
Up next is Samantha Starfish an expert in celebrity ketamine abuse among the cast of Jersey Shore?:dubious:
I scanned this title as “ancient astronaut therapist” which sounds even more specialized.
And an Oompa Loompa tan.
I completed the children’s maze on the back of a Denny’s menu and when I paid the bill I chose to be an ancient astronaut theorist rather than an ordained minister or a Scientologist sleeper agent.
I screwed up the connect the dots, so now they won’t tell me who killed JFK, but I did get the word search right and am now part of the Illuminati. 1$ discounts at Subway FTW. The raven caws twice in November.
Wikipedia has an interesting biography on Erich von Daniken. I think he was the grandfather (pun intended) of the whole ancient astronaut movement, when his first books were published in the US in the late Sixties. His theories and his experience appear to be mostly manufactured. It’s also interesting to note his fraud convictions.
So, for you budding ancient astronauticians, you need a few frauds under your belts, and then write a few books with hugely speculative conclusions, and then hit the lecture circuit. If you can pick up a few programs on the History channel, so much the better.
Should that fail, then shoot for your own version of Biblical interpretation.
~VOW
I thought you were referring to University of California at Santa Cruz. They have some rather unusual majors.
I wonder if - sans the fraud - it pays well?
Well, he did sell a hell of a lot of books … and he did go around doing lectures, not sure what the fee for admission was/is, and he had some sort of theme park deal as well.
**VOW **has it pretty well nailed, I think. The definition of “expert” is kind of like the definition of "Jew."An expert in a field is someone whom other experts would consider an expert. An expert in medicine is an MD who has multiple publications, has served in prestigious posts and won some awards. An expert on Ancient Astronauts (or whatever woo-ey field you might conceive of) is someone who has published books on the subject that sold a lot of copies and were well-reviewed by Art Bell and the like. Degrees might help, or they might not.
*There are, of course, various autodidacts here and there who buck this definition.
A colleague of mine, with the same degree (PhD in Folklore), occasionally appears on Ancient Aliens as an expert. Note that she does NOT believe in aliens, ancient or otherwise.* Still, our degree does qualify us as experts in belief narratives (traditional stories where belief is an element).
*This isn’t to say that she believes there are no aliens anywhere—I’ve never asked—just that the contemporary beliefs and narratives circulating about aliens interacting with Earth are not describing real entities.
As im many sciences, there a two different educational tracks. Broadly, you can become an Ancient Alien theorist, or an Ancient Alien expeimentalist.
I think it’s sad that we’re neglecting the rest of the alien timeline. Where are the specialists on Medieval aliens? Or Renaissance aliens? And surely the aliens must have had a hand in the Industrial Revolution.
The problem is that timeline gets entwined with biology. For instance, I understand the Medieval Aliens were Lizard People, and the Renaissance Aliens were some kind of hyena-like mammals.
In case that was a serious question, there actually is an answer. 20th- and 21st-century alien beliefs and narratives show a clear debt to the traditions of fairies in the anglophone world. So you can find medieval traditions of supernatural beings having been responsible for Stonehenge, but not space aliens, because that particular aspect is modern.
As usual, though, because the creatures themselves aren’t real, serious scholarship on the subject is poorly known and not terribly well respected. It seems that people just don’t like taking imaginary beings seriously, even as a window into human psychology and culture.
Just come to the meetings (new attendees have to bring the doughnuts); if you’ve seen Chariots of the Gods in a theater, you can be President of the chapter.
If you forgot the ’?' in the title, you’re disqualified. Sorry, we have standards.
And here I thought I’d only have to show you my probe scar to be immediately welcomed…
God love ya! I was being snide, but now that you’ve dangled this piece of interesting information out there, I’m going to have to do some reading on the influence of the supernatural in Medieval culture.
Which, I suppose, will make me the certified/certifiable “medieval alien theorist” after all. :eek: