John Ratcliff's Weblog

(Dr. Steven Greer driving his new $120k Stan Meyer water fueled dune buggy.) Dr. Steven Greer provides the kind of comic relief that modern society demands. Just this past week our favorite alien space brother spent about $120k to purchase Stan Meyer 's water fueled Dune Buggy (which hasn't run for over a decade) as well as various and sundry pieces of junk. Stan Meyer was that mythical inventor who claimed to have created a car which runs on water. He modified a dune buggy and claimed he ran it on nothing but water, wishes, and fairy tales. He got a fair amount of media coverage before he was sued by his investors, ruled a fraud by the courts, and died at an early age. Of course cars don't run on water but they can be modified to run on hydroxy gas. Meyer accomplished no great miracle by running his dune buggy on hydroxy gas, the real point of contention is whether or not he was running it as an over-unity device; meaning was he getting more energy out than he was ex

I made a decision last night that I am going to sell my 16mm film collection. I have enjoyed it immensely over the years and it has been great fun to host many showings. However, today I realized that it is more important that my family be able to enjoy a nice vacation than for me to have a bunch of films in storage. It took me many years, and many thousands of dollars, to accumulate this fine collection. Over the holidays I plan to start selling them on Ebay or to any private parties who are interested. The image above shows most of my feature films, but I have a few others that aren't on that list. My feature films include: "101 Dalmations", near mint LPP "Lady and the Tramp", near mint LPP with captions "Secret of Nimh", LPP but with heavy wear. "Pinocchio", LPP near mint "The Little Mermaid", LPP near mint "The Last Starfighter", LPP near mint "The Court Jester", Technicolor, breathtaking color, some spl

Last weekend I did a movie showing for the boyscouts. Each year, after their big canned food drive, they celebrate by camping out in Klondike State Park. They prepare a nice meal and set up campfires and other comforts for an outdoor movie showing. I brought out all of my equipment, both 16mm and DVD, and hooked up my big surround sound system to transform a little section of woods into an open air movie theater. One of the families even brought out a couch and chair to make the viewing area complete. Here are a few photographs from the event. I first showed Mickey's Christmas Carol and next my technicolor print of 'The Court Jester'. Afterwards we fired up the DVD system to show the newly released 'Iron Man'. My lovely wife

Here's a link to a photo gallery showing off  Jerry Seinfield's Porsche 550 ; one of only 70 ever made.  Worth probably about 1.5 million or so. And, here is a photograph of my Beck 550 replica, worth about $23,000.  Nice car either way... split here

ol (A typical knife and fork Freemason) As I have mentioned in the past, I get a lot of traffic to this website from people who are interested in joining Freemasonry.  This leads to quite a few emails from people who are interested in joining and asking me for information about how to do so. This happened once again today and I thought I would share both the email, and my reply to the candidate.  The email from the candidate is very nice and typical of the thoughtful contacts I receive. The email read: John, Thank you for writing the Freemason bIog.  I read it and found that it was very informative.  I have been very interested in becoming a Freemason for quite sometime now.  When I was in the military, a lot of my instructors were Masons.  They would all talk about the unity and camaraderie that came with being a Freemason.  I consider myself to be a good man; with that being said, I am always looking to better myself and grow.   I do not know any Masons in my area, thus making it har

What a nice bit of synchronicity this morning.  You may recall my favorite crazy guy in the bloggosphere, Eric Dubay .  A couple of months ago he wrote the most hysterically funny piece ever about Freemasons and UFOs .  As coincidence would have it I happen to be a Freemason who is 'in to' UFOs so, as always, life imitates art.  Anyone who has followed my UFO rants over the years knows by now that I am very anti-UFO and pro-Humanity.  I suppose I'm not towing the party line. Just today Eric posted links to two YouTube videos that someone created based on his original posting.  I don't know if the person who made the YouTube videos is making fun of Eric or not (I think he probably is) but either way it is terribly entertaining. Please enjoy. Here are the links to the two vidoes. Freemasons and UFOs part 1 Freemasons and UFOs part 2  

I used to be ‘in to’ UFOs a long time ago.   Back in the early 1990’s when I would frequent the Encounters forum on Compuserve.   I even managed to become involved in a little bit of UFO lore when Ray Santilli faxed alleged film segments from his infamous Alien Autopsy film to me.   This particular bit of UFO mythology today has become a well documented hoax, in large part due to the excellent research by Phillip Mantle .   Like most in the field I lost interest in UFOs because it seemed that nothing new was going on.   What point is there to read yet another UFO book or follow yet another sighting report?   And, the reports of alien abductees became like trying to glean meaning out of somebody else telling you about their dream or LSD drug trip. My attitude on the topic was that I was interested, but only up to a point.   Something ‘new’ would have to happen to get me interested in the topic again.   This evening I find myself newly interested in the topic but, surprisingly, i

The video posted above is truly sad. What is going on in our culture such that people who convince themselves that they are hearing voices in their head are treated as prophets and enlightened individuals? Have we reached such a degree of absurdity that when someone claims to be hearing voices in their head we don't treat this as a sign of possible mental illness? Poor Blossom Goodchild is a 'channeler' who claimed to have heard voices in her head and these voices told her that a giant UFO was going to fly overhead to prove the reality of the 'Galactic Federation of Light'. A number of things about this are shocking to me. First of all, why did poor Blossom not seek professional help when this happened? Why would she choose to literally believe the voices she heard in her head? This simply boggles my mind. Let me assure you that if I start hearing voices in my head I will make a bee-line straight to the nearest psychiatric professional to help me understand thi

This past week was a disturbing one in the McCain / Palin campaign for presidency. In the first time in American history a Presidential candidate should be investigated by the Secret Service for inciting mobs into threats of violence against a fellow candidate for the Presidency. Earlier this week, amid questions by Sarah Palin about just who is this 'Barack Hussein Obama' she continued by accusing him of being in league with terrorists. As the rowdy crowds reacted to this irresponsible rhetoric, prompting shouts of death threats which arose from the crowd, a growing concern was voiced within the Secret Service about how to deal with this crisis. It is a strange development indeed that in the United States of America we are faced with having to use the secret service to protect one Presidential candidate from the virulent attacks of another. Just this weekend I read an editorial in my own local newspaper which questioned why Obama's association with certain indviduals was

I haven't really made any kind of a personal post in a long time. The reason for this is because my father passed away a few weeks ago and I just couldn't bring myself to post about much of anything. It was no surprise that my father passed away, he has been dying of cancer for two and a half years. When he first learned he had cancer he was told it was already stage four cancer in his colon and liver and was given less than six months to live. Dad went into quite a panic and was scheduled for emergency surgery right away. Dad really wanted to get his affairs in order because he was worried he might, perhaps, not live through the surgery. In a short few days I bought some property from my Dad so he would have the money he felt he needed to settle his affairs. I also signed a power of attorney and did my best to support him during his hospital stay. Dad didn't really handle the whole prospect of his mortality very well. I thought it a little bit strange since Dad had

As I said in a recent post, I try not to be particularily political with this blog. Nevertheless, I am fond of political humour. I had an interesting experience this week. On Saturday I watched the great skit on Saturday Night Live with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. The thing is, I had seen nothing of the Palin-Couric interview before I saw the Tina Fey skit; so I just enjoyed it as a bit of satire. I have to say, it was incredible to see the real interview *after* having seen the satire! Oh, my, it was like watching Palin imitate Fey! I had no idea how dead on Tina Fey was being until I saw the real train wreck! At any rate, please click on the image above, or use the following link to see another great piece of satire. A fictional Palin 'facebook page'. Very funny as well. A couple of additional YouTube videos after my original post. Having reviewed this whole Palin situation I have come to the firm conclusion that John McCain is absolutely going to lose this election

I decided a while ago I would lay off on posting about Eric Dubay but, honestly, I cannot completely refrain. I am still subscribed to his blog which fills my newsreader with a daily dose of incoherent and convoluted rambling madness. In the past few days he has spent untold numbers of hours writing posts about numerology as it relates to 9-11 and what he believes are Masonic conspiracies. His posts are interesting to read as a raw demonstration of the power of a deranged mind. All you can think as you read it is how can someone find time for such a thing? His three most recent posts demonstrate a kind of obsession that, to be frank, appears to me to be more than slightly pathological. Decide for yourself. Here are links to the relevant posts. 9-11 Symbolism in Hollywood (by far the most entertaining) 9-11 Numerology (9+1+1=11 which multiplied times 12 and divided by 15 + 6 squared......) 9-11 Masonic Symbology At one point in the most recent post Eric asks the reader the follow

Change we can be afraid of? Now, this is not a particularly political blog. Of course, I do like to curse about UFOs, Free Energy devices, conspiracy theorists, and various and other sundry topics but politics I try to avoid. I just really don't like to get involved in politics above and beyond simply voting from time to time. Others far more qualified than myself discuss politics and I generally like to leave it at that. I only wanted to make a brief post this evening to see if anyone else has heard the above quote in recent days (or some variation thereof). Maybe it is propaganda films like this? In what kind of world do we live in where someone who is able to communicate well and energize the electorate is supposed to be a *bad* thing? In the past few days myself, my wife, and a friend of mine all experienced people responding to the topic of Obama's candidacy with some form of a comment about just how much 'that guy scares them'. In fact, it has come up so ofte

As you may, or may not, have noticed I haven't been writing much lately. However, today I was driving a lot and I used the opportunity to listen to some podcasts. Listening to the paracast inspired me to post a rant on their forums and, since I bothered to actually write something, I figured I would cross post it to my blog. This is a rant about UFOs and it occasionally includes foul language. If foul language offends you, please do not read this post. Post Script: Since making this initial post I had second thoughts about whether or not I should keep it up. Then, this morning, my newsfeed was filled with notifications about a new Steven Greer video which was posted online. If you want to see an excellent example of someone who is selling out the human race or, at the least, humiliating himself by prostrating before imaginary non-human entities, I encourage you to watch the video was well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I get a lot of traffic to this site from candidates interested in joining Freemasonry. Almost all of the time I have really good answers for their questions and I am happy to send them off on their quest. Occasionally I get follow up replies after they have joined and this kind of correspondence is always satisfying. Today I received a very difficult question from a candidate that I did not know how to adequately respond to. It is especially poignant as it comes at a time when we just nominated the first African American as a presidential candidate. I am going to include the original email I received, though I will not mention the candidates name. I will follow with my response. I am very curious to hear from my Internet brethren how you would have responded to this email. Please leave your responses in the comment section of this post. From the candidate: "Hi, My name is John Doe , I live in Somehwhere Town, NC. I have a question f