In looking over the UFO UpDates List this past week there was really only one thing that caught my eye and that was a discussion by several of the List members from both sides of the Atlantic. Apparently the old "you say tomahto and I say tomayto" applies to the field of Ufology.

Appearedly it seems that here in North America we have grown accustomed to using acronyms like UFOs and EBEs but in the United Kingdom, they still prefer to use Flying Saucers and Aliens or in some cases, flying disks. And for some particular reason, this little tidbit has become one of the points in a discussion on the "Radical or Common Misperception" thread on the List. The problem is that the discussion has gotten bogged down in some small points like this one.....

So... all of this talk made me decide to discuss what is a UFO again - for the benefit of those who've not heard this commentary.

We use the term all the time but it would seem that very few of us understand exactly what UFO really means!

The 'U' does not stand for United or for Unknown or Underwater or Unavailable. (Even though the thoughtless things don't stick around long enough for us to do anything constructive with them!) The 'U' stands for Unidentified! As in, the person or persons witnessing the object could not readily identify it! In other words, whatever they saw they did not recognize to be an airplane or a meteor or the planet Venus or even a flock of birds!

Now there is no doubt in my mind that some people witnessing a flock of birds flying in the sunlight may find themselves so caught up in seeing it that they just might mistake those birds for being something from another planet. However, if that same person or persons cannot readily identify what they're looking at as being a flock or a gaggle then it gets the Royal 'U' as in Unidentified!

Now just to finish off the rest of the acronym, the 'F' does not stand for that infamous four-letter word, although many people witnessing UFOs have used that word extensively. If you've followed along so far you might get a clue to what 'F' stands for from the fact that some UFOs are actually flocks of birds. Yep, you guessed it, the 'F' stands for Flying. So, for something to get the UFO title it has to be Unidentified and Flying. Yep, it can cover a flock of birds especially if you're like me and you can't tell the difference between a Sparrow and a Nuthatch. But that brings us to the final part of UFO.

'O' does not stand for 'Ohmigod'! Now I can easily understand why some of us get confused on that one, we've all heard reports from people that go:

"Look, look, it's an Unidentified Flying..... Ohmigod, what is it?" So, I apologize to those who think 'O' stands for 'Ohmigod' but in reality it stands for 'Object'. Now, put it all together and we have Unidentified Flying Object.

The key here is Unidentified! I don't care if it's a plane, a bird, Superman or some crashing piece of space debris, if the person who is witnessing it can't easily identify it as being something they recognize, it's unidentified and if it's airborne at the time they see it, it's flying.

Apparently many UFO sightings have been identified as Flying saucers but not all UFOs are. But whether in North America or in the U.K. most of them boil down to some kind of intelligently piloted vehicle.

The bottom line in all of this is whether we call 'em UFOs or flying saucers doesn't matter, what matters is trying to determine exactly what they are and where they're coming from.....

But that's just my take on it!