Pervue testing

I am hoping someone here has some insight on how to escalate an issue with an unresponsive city service office.
Background: A restaurant moved in two doors down from my apartment and installed some hot water exhaust system in the alley of their property. The exhaust is super loud and sounds like the didgeridoo of Satan. When they are busy it vents every 10 minutes for a minute each time.
I was pretty sure this was a code violation so I contacted 311 and was referred to the Air Management department (which apparently operates outside 311 pervue). This began in September. They have never once picked up the phone when I call. Initially, I left two messages and had no response in a weeks time. So, I found an email and sent that.
I finally received a phone call in mid-September and they scheduled someone to come check it out. That process took another two weeks. When the investigator finally came out they said they couldn't get a reading because if traffic.
So, after my prompting I was told a nightime inspector could come out when traffic isn't a factor but that it would take another two weeks. The business would be sent a notice that a test would be conducted first to give them a chance to get in compliance (even though they haven't been officially deemed out of compliance yet). So another two weeks go by and the night inspector comes out.
She determines they are in violation of code and calls to tell me she will speak with her supervisor about notifing the business officially.
That was mid-November. I called to follow up (no answer of course, did get a call back next day) last week because the business has still done nothing to remedy the problem.
I was trying to get basics as to when the business has to comply and what the ramifications are if they don't. Simple stuff really. I've been dealing with this noise for months...they've been deemed out of code...when will they need to fix it? Of course, I get the nasty, snappy city employee. Cops an attitude, won't or can't answer my questions, and asks if I want a Supervisor to call back. I said yes that's what I would like.
So no call back of course. I've left messages. Emailed. No response. It's as if I'm putting them our to do their job. I'm sick of it.
Doea anyone know how I can go up the chain of command with the city to get answers and more importantly action?

I was referred to my current neurologist after an attack last summer where I was shaking and had numbness on the right side of my face. He ordered some tests and diagnosed me with MS before Christmas.
When he diagnosed me he gave me no information, wouldn’t answer any of my questions and was basically like “¯_(ツ)_/¯I’m an epilepsy specialist” and referred me to an MS Specialist. Which is fair enough and we both thought that would be the last time we would be seeing each other.
Unfortunately, there’s a huge waiting list for the MS specialist and the soonest appointment I could get was the 10th of March and over christmas I started having an attack with the same symptoms as the first one but much worse with numbness spreading across my face, a HUGE increase in nerve pain in my hand feet and face, huge brain fog, blurry vision, new tingling and pins and needles, difficulty balancing and walking, etc.
I hoped it would go away over Christmas but it’s been 4 weeks now and it keeps getting significantly worse even with the DMT. I have numbness now constantly on the right side of my face including my tongue, my right foot hurts ALL a the time and I keep tripping over my feet when I try and walk. I’m in the worst way I’ve been ever, significantly worse than a month ago and it’s pretty stressful.
I went to my family doctor because I’m kind of in between neurologists and she agreed that it seemed like an attack and told me that I’m still under the pervue of care of the epilepsy specialist neurologist, and the MS specialist can’t treat me until I see him. She told me to email my current neurologist and tell him I’m having an attack and ask about the possibility of steroids.
I got an appointment with the neurologist and went to him and he immediately told me that he didn’t think I was having an attack and numbness isn’t a symptom of an attack, just a symptom of MS. I said that wasn’t my only symptom and started listing them off.
He kept cutting me off and telling me none of these symptoms meant I was having an attack “unless it’s (insert name of whatever brain plaque here), but that’s very rare “. I asked him what are the symptoms of an attack, so I know for the future? He kind of sighed exasperatedly and said “havent you read any of the (insert name of local NGO MS Charity here) pamphlets ?” I said a bit but not in depth, he replied with “yeaahhh, you should go do that”.
I pushed him a bit (but very politely) and asked him what he would be looking for to diagnose an MS attack ? He said “probably difficulty walking, vision changes, balance problems”. I told him (again, in detail) that I had all of those things (when I never had them before) and they keep getting worse.
He made me walk (about 1 meter if even, and I nearly fell over and had to grab his examination table to steady myself) for him and said “yeah no you’re fine”. He didn’t even look or test anything else, he told me that the vision changes would need to be worse and that I would need to not be able to walk at all for him to consider it an attack (???) and he wouldn’t prescribe steroids and gave me a 100 mg increase of my gabapentin (which is at the lowest possible dose ) and basically kicked me out of his office and charged me 175 bucks.
I went home and cried because I am so frustrated, and I’m in so much pain and I feel completely stranded and hopeless. It’s really scary being able to feel my peripheral neuropathy spreading up my legs and arms and being unable to do anything and breaking 3 acrylic shatter proof cups in the last two weeks because of muscle spasms. I have tremors so bad right now (which I didn’t have before Christmas at all, I had it during the first attack and it went away) that I can’t hold anything without knocking things over and I’m so tired I can’t pick them up. I can’t think or even engage with anything because my brain fog is so bad. I can’t remember words or hold conversations. I am so isolated to my apartment because I whenever I try and drive I end up not being able to focus and it’s dangerous. If I try and get public transport I feel like I’m dying just doing the few minutes walk to the bus stop and back. I feel so gaslight too for so many throw away things he said that I’m too tired to even write. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to walk at all by March 10th and I’m scared that will never come back. I’m scared because my dominant hand nerve pain is so bad and tremoring that I’ll never be able to do things I love like drawing again.
I am not looking for medical advice, I’m just venting because I feel so sad and scared and alone. Sorry if this is against the rules though

In light of the new modern horizons spoilers, I'm here today to discuss with you all what is possibly the most important topic regarding my favorite deck: which art should I be using for the most powerful card in legacy, the basic forest?
Loam only runs a single copy of the humble basic land, but it is perhaps one of the most important cards in the deck. I can save you from utter annihilation at the hands of cards like blood moon, allowing you the privilege of a well timed abrupt decay, and eventually victory. It's role in the best deck in magic is often under appreciated, and we should honor it by choosing the best art possible. There is also value in intimidating your opponent with far superior basic land art. Embarrassing your opponent by revealing their terrible taste in both basic lands that are not forests and their art is key in many matchups.
Before I begin, I know many of you are going to ask why we do not run a basic swamp in 4c loam. Wouldn't that help us cast Abrupt Decay in many situations? That is a ridiculous question and you should be ashamed for even asking it. I won't dignify it with a response.
Foil John Avon Onslaught Forest - 7/10 - We'll start with a classic. There's something mysterious about this art, and it looks great thanks to the hard work of Mr. Avon. Bonus points for the old OG magic border that looks like a scroll instead of a game boy advance. This card looks great in foil. Nobody would be embarrassed to play this forest.
Non-foil 8th edition John Avon Forest - 2/10 - The only redeeming qualities for this forest are that it has the John Avon art and you can fetch for it easier. Other than that, it is a total embarrassment to magic players that play green. You're a legacy player, go back to standard if you need help fetching for your forests. Shameful. Still gets a few points for not being a swamp.
Unhinged John Avon Forest - 9/10 - These things just look fantastic, especially in foil. More art from the masterful John Avon, this modern take on the full art land is just a workhorse. Bonus points for being easy to fetch without hideous white borders.
Unglued Terese Nielson Forest - 9/10 - This is the forest that started it all for full art pimped out basics. This used to be your only option for getting such an intimidating land in order to scare blue players with the mighty power of green magic. This art is a workhorse that has been repping the best color in the game since before many of you were born. As the famous tree [[Doran the Siege Tower]] once said "Each year that passes rings you inwardly with memory and might. Wield your heart, and the world will tremble." Listen to your elders on this old-growth forest, the trees are old as fuck here.
Alpha Black Border Christopher Rush Forests - 8/10 - This one is for the [[Old Fogeys]] who believe that the best green mana comes from the most ancient forests. The art on these things is by Christopher Rush, and that's the guy who did the art for Black Lotus, so you know he ain't playin when he makes the art for a mana producing card. If you see you your opponent drop this thing, you know the player sitting across from you has been playing your dad's magic through the good times and the bad. They've seen some shit and they know how to throw on the hurt to someone who would dare play [[brainstorm]] in their game of magic. Tread lightly. Also these actually say they tap for mana which appeals to some people I guess.
Asia Pacific Land Program Korea Forest - 8/10 - Wizards is out here seeking success on the international market. The economy is global now baby, and WotC wants a piece of it. These lands were sick, and reflect real places from our planet. Real places make real mana, and players who like to keep it real use real lands like this one. Abrupt Decays cast using real mana are 30% more uncouterable. Force this you idiot.
European Land Program Germany Forest - 9/10 - The black forest in Germany is dense as fuck, has Castles, and inspired a bunch of Grimm's fairy tales. Those fairy tales were hard as hell, and the mana from this forest is even realer than the mana from korea. Have you ever ever head a German speak? They get down to business, with fast cars and no nonsense beers, and the mana they make is no exception.
Panoramic Forests from Kamigawa and Rise of the Eldrazi - 0/10 - This is a cool concept but 4c Loam only plays a single forest. This is non-negotiable so these are a non-starter for us.
Zendikar Full Art Forest - 8/10 - Un-set forests were getting pretty pricey at this point in Magic's history. Zendikar was a lands matter themed set that brought us enemy color fetchlands (an absolute win for 4c loam) as well as bringing full art lands to the masses. This gave the common man access to the power of full art basics. No longer would full art lands be the pervue of bourgeois. This is the people's green mana. However, like other mass produced soviet goods, these just can't match the quality of the green mana from John Avon's or Terese Nielson's un-set cards. An excellent substitute for the masses, but just not quite up to the build standards of the originals.
Amonkhet Full Art Forest - 7/10 - Like the Zendikar lands before them, these cheap copies of the un-set full art basics allow the working man to access some of the awesome power of full-art green mana. This is the Honda of full art lands. It's going to get you the mana you need and it's better than a white bordered 8th edition land, but you'll always wonder why the un-set lands seem to just tap better. These lands do get some props for having some cool story related tension, but Bolas is Grixis colored, so we're a bit off base here.
Hour of Devastation Full Art Forest - 8/10 - This is the slightly nicer model Honda you can get for a couple thousand more with options like heated seats. It's the Amonkhet land but way more metal. Look at that river of blood! These things look great in foil. Even if they are fairly common, they're a more than serviceable forest.
Unstable Full Art Forest - 8/10 - These things are the Lexus of full art lands. They're a hyper modern take on the John Avon full art forest and they look pretty slick in foil. For a lot of people, this is a slightly nicer but still accessible option for making green mana. This is for a spike with a taste for elegance. It's a utilitarian design that tells your opponent you're here to play a serious, no nonsense game of Magic the Gathering. When they see you drop this bad boy, they're going to know you're here to win.
Ice Age Snow-Covered Forest - 8/10 - This forest is for the old school green mage with eclectic tastes. Imagine the look on your miracle opponent's face when they predict you naming forest and you flip this shit. Guess what, you don't even run a card named "forest" in your entire deck. You're absolutely nuts, but you're still here, tapping your old school lands and making green mana. What the fuck is wrong with you? Nobody knows, but you're doing something right because you're still casting cards like Knight of the Reliquary even after they blood mooned you, because that shit is still a basic land. Totally insane.
Coldsnap Snow-Covered Forest - 8/10 - This isn't going to be everyone's favorite forest but the art for this one resonates with me personally because it was one of my first cards when I was starting to play this awesome game and reminds me of the winters of my childhood in the ancient forests of New England. It looks great in foil, and the best green mana is the mana that comes from lands that mean something to you. I have personally destroyed many back to basics using this particular land, so it means a lot. I've thrown down a lot of smack in this post, but if the 8th edition white bordered forest is the one that means the most to you, then you should play it. But low key you are also kind of ignorant.
Modern Horizons Full Art Snow-Covered Forest - ?/10 - Wow, these new full art snow basics from Modern Horizons are really going to shake up the legacy metagame. They're probably going to need some testing to see if they are actually good, but god damn, I can't believe WotC would actually print something this powerful. Do they even playtest these cards these days? These could be the single most impactful addition to Legacy since True Name Nemesis. I wouldn't be surprised if they ban these and Brainstorm a few months after the release of Modern Horizons. Wtf is that leyline magic stuff under the tree in this art? This is going to be some seriously powerful green mana.
Wald - 5/10 - Is this even a forest? If you wanted to play some plains, Death and Taxes is over there. Get out of here you crazy guy.
2017 Gift Pack Forest - 6/10 - This art is pretty cool to be honest, but I've never even heard of these things. They're probably pretty common, and not worth delving too deep into.
Standard Showdown Forest - 8/10 - These aren't full art, nor was the art made by John Avon or Terese Nielson, but Rebecca Guay is a pretty awesome artist with a unique style, and these are foil basics that you do have to earn by actually playing some magic. These lands speak to a quietly confident green mage. They know these lands aren't the most pimp, but they still look good. That's honestly pretty intimidating. If I ran into a player running these, I'd think "Wow, this is a magic player who doesn't care what anyone thinks of them, they are playing their own game. They know deep down they don't need the approval of others to smash my face. I'm in deep shit now." You gotta watch out for those kinds of players because they're the ones that show up to GP's with decks like Skred and win the whole god damn tournament because of people constantly underestimating them before getting their shit pushed in by a 5 drop dragon with protection from white.
Gran Prix Promo Forest - 3/10 - Nothing says "I scrubbed out of the main event and am just here to borrow my buddy's sneak and show list to win legacy side events with absolutely no experience in the format" like the GP promo lands. These do look trippy as hell but have some self respect.
Super Rare Ravnica Guild Forest - 9/10 - I don't even know how you get these things, but they have guild symbols on them so they're pretty legit forests. If you want to play your basics and have your opponent pick it up and look at it every time, this is a good way to do it. Look at you, MMrs. Fancypants green mage, playing cards people have never seen before. I bet you bought this card at some sort of auction for be-monocled individuals of great wealth and means. I bet you've bought multiple types of cheeses during your very interesting life for the wealthy and privileged.
MPS Forest - MPS/10 - These say MPS on them instead of having the green mana symbol. I'm not really sure if these are even capable of making mana to be honest. You should probably call a judge.
Judge Promo Full Art Terese Nielson Forest - 10/10 - These lands are moody and just gorgeous, without pretension in my opinion. A fitting reward for all the hard work judges put in to create the competitive and fair environment we experience at huge and small events alike. When you play this forest or see it being played by your opponent, remember the judges that make this game so great for everyone. They also invented EDH which is a crazy format for crazy people.
Guru Forest - 10/10 - This is the best forest if you can get your hands on it, and produces the best and most pure forms of green mana. It's got some crazy unconventional art from Terese Nielson that is instantly recognizable for the timeless piece that it is. This is like the 60 year old ancient scotch whisky that cost thousands of dollars that you only break out for special occasions and took you years of career development and networking to acquire. It exudes taste and shows that you are a green mage of refinement and dignity. Seriously if you get the chance you've got to take a look at one of these things. The set symbol is this beautiful copper color that really only comes across in person. As far as I'm concerned, this should be the end goal for any dedicated 4c Loam player looking to truly pimp out their deck. This is a forest for the enthusiast.

Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/notes/john-f-burroughs/consideration-16-gibbs-rule-11-when-the-jobs-done-walk-away/2151234921581105/

Consideration #16: Gibbs rule # 11 When the jobs done walk away
It's time.
Here's why:
In 1980, I was twenty-something, fresh out of basic training on my first duty assignment at RAF Bentwaters. At the end of that year I had a truly phenomenal experience as part of the Bentwaters/Woodbridge/Rendlesham Forest incident. It was inexplicable to me then and while I know a lot more about a lot of things now than I did then, that experience is as inexplicable to me now as it was then.
I was never into the whole flying saucer thing before hand. In the last decade have become part of the overall UFO/UAP community -- if you can call it a community. And I am no closer to a firm understanding of that, either. Here then are my closing thoughts at this point, having been an 'experiencer', career USAF security guy with a high level of security clearance, witness to some advanced technology related to defense - some of which I cannot tell you about because of the clearances I received and still honor, an investigator into my own case, a researcher into a wide range of related fields, a speaker and finally a media interviewee and media host, interviewing an equally wide range of personalities.
Specifically, I do not have a complete and firm understanding of the events in the forest all those years ago. I don't know if I ever will. I know enough to know that the disclosure/confirmation road show is not the path to that understanding.
If you asked me and I was candid with you I'd say that there was a lot of very exotic EW and ECM and radar technologies at play in East Anglia at the time - 'ours' - which account for the incidents, by attracting something even more advanced - 'theirs'.
But don't quote me.
As a friend of mine likes to put it, 'all certainty in this field is provisional.' Meaning that taking into account all I know, I have my belief as to what went on, but the additional information I don't have could easily change my belief. And if 'they' have command of exotic technology that allows them to manipulate reality and space-time, I don't even know who 'they' are.
It's time to move on, armed with what I know, or think I know, and get on with the remaining years of what has been an interesting life.
It's hard to tell if a truly definitive account of what happened in Rendlesham can or will ever be assembled. Certainly there was a significant interest in the events by elements of the US and UK defense and intelligence communities, far more than either have let on to the general public. Certainly, tangled up in that are seriously legitimate classified projects and operations that need to remain classified for good reasons. Certainly there are reports of 'high strangeness', such as the house that was there and then wasn't there, that fit firmly in Vallee/Davis's taxonomy of 'anti-physical' effects. That is, observed behavior that defies the standard model of physics as we know it. Certainly there are various accounts by various researchers that are measured and solid. Certainly there are works that are largely inaccurate, put forward by 'witnesses' who were not as involved as they claim to be. Certainly there are well-meaning but poorly thought out narratives that try to fit a handful of cherry-picked facts into a presumed cause with varying degrees of success. Certainly there are bits of sensationalistic but shoddy journalism the serve only to confuse understanding while selling newspapers or books. Certainly there is official documentation and media that strains itself trying to force a prosaic explanation -- that somehow Jim Penniston and I could not tell the difference between a distant lighthouse and an inexplicable object right in front of us in a clearing. And certainly there are outright hoaxes perpetrated for the fun of it that do nothing but add to the amount of information one has to sift through to comprehend the case.
In short, it's a mess. A muddle. A quagmire.
But it certainly happened, and aspects were reported by a large number of people, many of whom were rational, trained military or other career individuals. And certainly it was an expectedly unusual series of events. Unfortunately, between the inability to access all of the information still hidden behind various levels of classification by a very few individuals or organizations 'in the know', and the very nature of the phenomenon calls into question the nature of consciousness/reality taken as two sides of the same coin, it seems impossibly to discern what 'really' happened.
I suspect I've formed as solid a picture as anyone outside the perpetrators of the events as to what went on. And yet it is incomplete and, well, provisional until I learn more.
The point being that enough of this is for me, enough. I am comfortable in what I think I know and there is a retirement to be enjoyed. My son is close to graduating college and he is off to seek his career. There is no upside to pursuing an engigma that may be, in the end, unknowable.
Generally, recent trends in the 'UFO community' are equally disheartening. First of all, a cross section of attendees at any given conference range from highly 'woo-woo', new age types with belief systems involving chakras, crystals and etheric beings whose beneficial messages can only be received by 'channeling' - whatever that is - the information being transmitted, to studious researchers who produce highly documented books discussing the reports of the phenomenon in clinical detail only to arrive at the conclusion that elements of the government are hiding something from us. Well, of course they are. That's what governments do. Presuming you know enough to know what is being hidden is hubris defined.
In between are the civilians who attend the conference and listen uncritically to the presentations, or join MUFON and take down reports of lights in the sky in tremendous detail only to arrive at the conclusion, in the most interesting of cases, that the investigator with his or her methods does not know what it was. And so another report goes in the data base as unknown.
I did not realize it until I got involved in the last decade or two, but the Holy Grail of a number of relentless public figures in the UFO community is 'Disclosure' with a capital D. That is what the TV series 'The Event' was all about. That is what the public hearings and presentations at the National Press Club were all about. And that is never going to happen because, given the nature of our society and the legitimate national security issues surrounding the technology under the well funded eye of various alphabet soup agencies which is on the blurry edge of unbelievable, the can not be the Disclosure event so fervently demanded by UFO lobbyists.
Few people outside the closely guarded internal understanding of these kinds of things have the means, the devotion and the mind to get close to the kind of understanding the phenomenon demands. Jacques Vallee is one of them. Robert Bigelow is another.
Bigelow came right out and said in a seminal interview with George Knapp years ago that 'disclosure' was not even the right goal. To move forward, he said, all that is needed - indeed, all that was likely possible - was 'confirmation'. He further came right out and stated on 60 Minutes that he was convinced some form of advanced intelligence - 'ET' - is present, and that there was no point in even debating that.
Bigelow is notoriously pragmatic and does not waste time while moving forward. Maybe that explains why he has two independently funded space stations on orbit and a test module attached to the International Space Station testing an advance form of space habitat, while others are giving lectures at UFO conferences. One of the prior Considerations I've posted makes the case that 'Confirmation trumps Disclosure.' To the extent that the UFO community thought they understood what I meant by that at the time, they have simply concluded that Confirmation is Disclosure rebranded for more precise public consumption, much the way 'UAP' has to a degree superseded 'UFO'. Which is to say the same way that 'UFO' superseded 'flying saucer' - a different term for the same thing. In short, they didn't get it.
Confirmation works because it is a limited paradigm shift, designed to allow the football to be moved closer to the goal post, not a mainstream society paradigm shift - which would require the football to morph into a basketball and shake the foundation of football fans everywhere.
The football in this case is human capability and the goal post is whatever technology can appear out of nowhere, interact with our physical reality, hover, accelerate instantly to speeds on the order of Mach 7 without making a sound and then make abrupt 90 degree course changes at that speed only to disappear back in to nowhere. An oft-overlooked key point here is that they do it with equal ease underwater as they do in the air, oblivious to the effects of differential medium density.
Confirmation can - and apparently has - changed the minds of a few key politicians and members of academia to the extent that a scientifically viable study of the field and the artifacts and reports data can get funded and bright minds recruited to conduct such a study. And if enough is learned proceed to the incredibly daunting task of engineering. Bigelow wants to get something accomplished, not change the minds of everyone who watches Interstellar or Contact and thinks it would be interesting if the events depicted could actually occur in reality. Or eats their popcorn secure in the knowledge that those events can't and haven't occurred.
And so there has been an ideological collision between the UFO community and the folks that are actually doing something, resulting in more, not less overall confusion. The UFO community has in large part never realized what Bigelow was talking about and with the advent of Tom DeLonge a whole new group of young gunshas arrived, starting from square one and one of DeLonge's books needing to try understand the cultural history of the Phenomenon. (They would be better off reading everything Vallee ever wrote, in order of publication.) Absent that understanding, they are proceeding to breathlessly post videos of C- 130's seen in FLIR and decades old reports and hoaxes of UFO's next to the TicTac videos on Facebook and Above Top Secret.
The godfather of the 'Disclosure' faction is Don Keyhoe, an ex-military figure who emerged in the days of the flying saucers, writing articles for TRUE magazine, books with titles like 'Flying Saucers from Outer Space' and making appearances on Television with the likes of Mike Wallace explaining that the Government knew flying saucer are real and they were hiding that from the public. A few others like Edward Ruppelt and Stanton Friedman and to an extent atmospheric physicist James McDonald picked up that theme and produced the solid literature of the day.
They were not entirely helped by the likes of George Adamski and others of the Space Brothers faction, but the message was similar.
More recently the 'Disclosure' movement has been propelled by folks like Greer and Bassett and documented by folks like Dolan and Kean.
There are several problems with the hope for 'Disclosure.'
First, if you understand the depths of aerospace research done by DARPA and more secret agencies, you can't disclose what you know about the phenomenon without disclosing to a degree how you found it out. Really weird information is to entangled with national security to 'disclose' anything with a sweeping address from the Oval Office. Or in our case, a tweet from a guy who has delivered some 900 demonstrably false statements since gaining office.
Second of all it presumes what is to be disclosed, among them that the 'others' are indeed ET.
Third, 'Disclosure' presumes that whoever is hiding 'the truth' actually knows what that truth is. I tend to doubt they do.
Fourth is the argument that the public can't handle the truth. That may indeed be a valid argument against disclosure, but not for the reasons that the Disclosure proponents like to deny. It may be that whatever actual truth or whatever firm hypothesis could, in principle, be disclosed is, really, something that mainstream society can not handle.
The other faction in the ideological collision that is UFOology today is the Confirmation movement, about which I know somewhat more than most. But not enough, sadly. Like many, I was used for the purposes of the key players and told no more than I needed to know to be useful to them. I fairness, they saved my life and I'm not inclined to speculate publicly about what they are up to - other than to say it is their own goals, not a better model for civilization on this planet.
There are four aspects to the Confirmation movement.
The so-called 'usual suspects' are group of pretty serious science guys truly trying to back-engineer whatever technology can do what certain reports and videos demonstrate can be done. Which is beyond the bounds of our current models of physics. Names like Hal Puthoff, Kit Green, Jacques Vallee, Eric Davis can be traced back to a Stanford Research Institute program in the '70's, which included Edgar Mitchell. These same names and others worked for Joe Firmage's short-lived ISSO, Bob Bigelow's NIDS and later BAASS/AATIP, and now are connected with To The Stars as the real, experienced science and UAP team. A number of new-comers such as Jim Simivan, Steve Justice, come out of traditional aerospace and intelligence for whatever reason to fill out the To The Stars team. It's not clear how much they know of the history of the UAP or why they want to participate, but they have jumped on the band-wagon. To The Stars' lead singer Tom DeLonge and back up vocalist Lou Elizondo seem preoccupied with creating the kind of television that will change the mainstream consensus media paradigm.
And finally the collective efforts of all of the above and a flashy website has inspired a new generation of young guns who are busy rediscovering on Facebook an entire ancient convoluted history of UFO/UAP folklore - as if all that new- to-them material will have any effect on society if rehashed properly. Given the complexities of getting data and information declassified and the way the Confirmation movement has gone about it, there has been a predictable backlash from the Disclosure faction as to the methods and motives of a bunch of intelligence community veterans teaming with a former rock star to sell shares in a Public Benefit Corporation and make yet another History Channel edutainment special.
The net result is that there is more chaos and less consensus among the UFO/UAP community, not less and it looks like several dogs each chasing each other's tails intent upon revealing or obscuring - take your pick - some ultimate truth that will, we are all reassured, 'change everything.' This seems like a McGuffin - the part of the movie plot that drives all the action, but does not actually matter.
Everything is not going to change in the manner most of the players would tell you they would want it to if asked. At least not as the result of one single monumental media revelation.
There is no question that the working paradigm of reductionist, materialistic, deterministic standard model of physics driven western technological society is inadequate to explain a variety of phenomena. It's also a dangerous way to run a planet. It certainly needs to change, but it's not likely that the UFO/UAP disclosure/confirmation road show is going to effect that change.
For several reasons.
First of all, the disclosure/confirmation road show is too fractious to put up a unified front to mainstream society. The wide range of belief systems presents a very fuzzy picture of what - if you simply assume that traditional 'unknown objects seen in the sky' are the product of some form of advanced intelligence - the phenomenon is.
Secondly, the viable national security implications of whatever the government might know as a result of countless classified and open investigations into it are deeply interwoven with whatever facts are available. Clearly there is a race of some sort going on by governments around the world to get to the technology first. An announcing all you know may unwittingly aid the other side to get there first. Disclosure is not an option - if you happen to be in a position to know something worth disclosing. Confirmation has come and gone and no one is the wiser.
Thirdly, no big announcement that we are not alone is going to change anything in the average life of the average citizen in any meaningful way. They will likely just shrug and say 'I thought so' and go on going to work every day to pay off the 30 year mortgage and buy a bigger flat screen for the living room.
Fourthly - if that is a word - mainstream consensus understanding of the 'ET' phenomenon will not happen until the intelligence behind those phenomena want it to happen. Historically, they are not inclined to leave much evidence around and what there is is inscrutable. If 'they' wanted us to know they exist, we would. And until they do - which may take the human race evolving much further than it has to date - we won't. Or at least a few of us will argue with the rest of us about it.
More profoundly, understanding any of this requires, as Vallee and Davis put it, a new model of physical reality. Their 2003 paper can be found here:
http://www.larrylowe.com/TTS/Vallee-Davis-model.pdf
Until an Apollo scale effort is made to define that new model of reality, the right experiments cannot be designed, and the results of conventional ones will be to bound by starting assumptions to produce meaningful results.
In short, modern science and technology is laboring under the wrong starting assumption that consciousness is a mere emergent phenomenon resulting from an arbitrarily critical mass of neurons and not a fundamental building block of a model of reality. This was explained by Edgar Mitchell in a piece you can find here: http://www.larrylowe.com/TTS/Unexpected-Benefit-Apollo-14.pdf
Mitchell traces the root of the problem just about everybody has in figuring things out to a deal that was made between the church and the heretics at the end of the Dark Ages that left consciousness in the pervue of the church and deprived science from considering it as profoundly as it should have. The result is a kind of experiential Catch-22: You cannot experience - much less comprehend - a wider, richer reality from within the confines of the reality you assume is all the reality that there is.
Once you realize that consciousness is far more powerful and misunderstood than conventional thinking imagines it to be, then you begin to see why the roots of the confirmation movement were planted in the SRI experiments into PSI capabilities that led to Project Stargate. And you can understand why Kit Green is working to conduct experiments to put MRI instrumentation on a pair of known, proven psychics to measure what goes on when they establish communication with 'the others'.
To conduct these kinds of experiments is an attempt to understand why, for instance, it's a not uncommon point of understanding that the minds of the occupants of a certain class of unidentified objects are part of the propulsion system that lets them
Which gets me to the final reason yet another History Channel series is not going to change everything.
The real profound change is in the mind of the individual, not the media of the society.
And the most useful tool may be some form of meditation where the individual trains their mind to access modes of perception unavailable to a product of public school education and thus open their experience to a wider reality. Or, if you prefer push-button enlightenment, you can read Terrance McKenna and/or Strassman's work on DMT.
The inexplicable and unfathomable events of Rendlesham deeply impacted my life. In the last decade I've undertaken both a public and a private investigation looking for answers which seem to lay just beyond discovery. I'd like to thank the many good minds I've worked with, both publicly and privately as part of my personal network for the effort, advise, insight and support they have provided which helped me get as far as I have gotten. They know who they are.
Bottom line?
There is no Apollo scale program to sort this all out. There is no hope for further UFO-con's to edify the mass consensus opinion in any meaningful way. The usual suspects have accomplished their goal to quietly get the money they need to work on the problem they are trying to solve and we won't know what that really is until and unless Bob Bigelow announces a working Field Effect Propulsion system and puts Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos out of the space access business.
The rest is just the noise of young guns starting to wade into the murky quicksand of the field, brimming with optimism that they will soon get this sorted out and effect profound change. Just like Don Keyhoe and Ed Ruppelt did several generations ago.
I've done my portion.
For those still on a mission, there is a library of KGRA Phenomenon Radio episodes available for the young guns to listen to and take up the mantle if they wish. And - although it's not a direct result of my work - there is the list of the BASS/ASTIP project paper titles to use as a Rosetta Stone to decipher the mission of the usual suspects. Figure out how all those disparate subjects relate to one another and you will figure out what they are up to. Figure that out and you'll understand the scope of the problem.
And so I'm going back to being for the foreseeable future John Burroughs, average guy.
In the words of Edward R. Murrow,
Good night and good luck.

Hello /linuxadmin. I'm not entirely sure where to ask about this issue, especially considering how barren /owncloud is. I hope this isn't too outside the pervue of this subreddit!
I'm setting up an Owncloud 5.0.14a instance on Debian 7, on a server with a large amount of storage space. On that space is a large (100+GB) music library. I want to set up the Owncloud so that every user (half a dozen to a dozen) has access to this one large, shared, music library, and have it available in their player. The music library is under "/mnt/data/share/Music", and owncloud data is stored under "/mnt/data/owncloud"; "/mnt/data" is a ZFS filesystem, but that's probably not relevant here.
The most obvious solution, from my current knowledge of Owncloud, is to "import" the files from "share/Music" to a single user's account, via a symlink from within the "owncloud" directory, and then share that folder to all the other users. I chose to use my "admin" user as the one to hold the symlinked collection and export it. This appears to work great! My two test users both see all the files in their "Shared" directories and can download them fine.
The problem comes when I try to import them into the "Music" library. "admin" can do this "fine" (it imported about 3000 songs out of just under 100000), but I'm not sure if that was due to interruption or failure of Owncloud. My test users, though, never import anything. The "import" progress bar fills, then restarts multiple times, and hasn't completed after almost 24 hours.. I don't see any entries being created in the "oc_media_songs" database in my MySQL DB either.
I'm at a bit of a loss here; if OC6 supports this better, I'll try again, but I couldn't even get it this far (no support for scanning shared folders). Is there any way to get this plan to work, in either version? I'm more partial to OC6 due to the nicer media library (tiles and such), but I'll stick with OC5 if it works.
Edit: I've been able to notice and isolate a pattern:
While the user is scanning the library, my system is under fairly heavy load from the apache2 and mysqld processes. Makes sense, since I'm scanning the media via a PHP webUI and placing it into mysql. However, right before the import fails and restarts, both processes drop. However I'm not seeing anything in my server logs to indicate a crash or problem of any kind. This shows at least that it's scanning normally, and then it just stops. I also have tons of free RAM during this. Perhaps weirdness with MySQL?
Edit2: I've truncated all the media tables and am trying another import.
Edit3: Nope, no such luck. Still stopped at about 75-80% without actually writing any data to the MySQL DB. I'm going to sleep now, but will try some other ideas tomorrow (like splitting the library up into smaller pieces).
Final edit: Having never heard of Subsonic before, I'm now successfully using it to manage my shared media streaming, and bought a subscription. This is some great software! I'll still use OC (6) for files, but this takes care of the streaming. Thanks everyone!