L. Gordon Cooper.

3. What makes Timothy Good so credible as a researcher?

First, it is important to define credible --

cred·i·ble : offering reasonable grounds for being believed From www.merriam-webster


As a threshold matters, Mr. Good does not come across as a crank, obviously he is well educated and well spoken, and held a job for 20 years that is very competitive to secure: he worked as a professional violinist. Other factors that, in my opinion, add to his credibility are –

1.Mr. Good writes and publishes books which require a significantly greater investment of time and effort than would, for example, writing a blog and one assumes an author of a book would be less willing to sacrifice credibility than would a potentially anonymous writer of a blog. 2. Mr. Good is not benefitting financially in an out-sized way from his publications and efforts. 3. Mr. Good is often cited as a reputable source by experts in the field. 4. I cannot identify bias or judgment in his choice of wording. 5. Mr. Good’s writings evidence consistency and 6. Mr. Good’s depth and breadth of knowledge evidence the tremendous energy he has put into his research which further suggests that he is genuine.

* * * * * * *


Three quotes:

1. "While flying with several other USAF pilots over Germany in 1957, we sighted numerous radiant flying discs above us. We couldn't tell how high they were. We couldn't get anywhere near their altitude."
"While working with a camera crew supervising flight testing of advanced aircraft at Edward's Air Force Base, California, the camera crew filmed the landing of a strange disc object that flew in over their heads and landed on a dry lake nearby. A camera crewman approached the saucer, it rose up above the area and flew off at a speed faster than any known aircraft."
---NASA astronaut, L. Gordon Cooper.

I’ve always enjoyed this quote. The man was well-trained and well educated and was selected in a very competitive program to be an American astronaut; the gate-keepers he faced would only let someone through if they had the “right stuff.” The man had nothing to gain by his willingness to speak the truth, and indeed, had all too much to lose.

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

hawk 553.haw.0098 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

The Stag in the Ox-Stall

A Stag, roundly chased by the hounds and blinded by fear to the danger he was running into, took shelter in a farmyard and hid himself in a shed among the oxen. An Ox gave him this kindly warning: "O unhappy creature! why should you thus, of your own accord, incur destruction and trust yourself in the house of your enemy?' The Stag replied: "Only allow me, friend, to stay where I am, and I will undertake to find some favorable opportunity of effecting my escape." At the approach of the evening the herdsman came to feed his cattle, but did not see the Stag; and even the farm-bailiff with several laborers passed through the shed and failed to notice him. The Stag, congratulating himself on his safety, began to express his sincere thanks to the Oxen who had kindly helped him in the hour of need. One of them again answered him: "We indeed wish you well, but the danger is not over. There is one other yet to pass through the shed, who has as it were a hundred eyes, and until he has come and gone, your life is still in peril." At that moment the master himself entered, and having had to complain that his oxen had not been properly fed, he went up to their racks and cried out: "Why is there such a scarcity of fodder? There is not half enough straw for them to lie on. Those lazy fellows have not even swept the cobwebs away." While he thus examined everything in turn, he spied the tips of the antlers of the Stag peeping out of the straw. Then summoning his laborers, he ordered that the Stag should be seized and killed.

The Hawk, the Kite, and the Pigeons

The Pigeons, terrified by the appearance of a Kite, called upon the Hawk to defend them. He at once consented. When they had admitted him into the cote, they found that he made more havoc and slew a larger number of them in one day than the Kite could pounce upon in a whole year.

Avoid a remedy that is worse than the disease.

tenements 993.ten.00030 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

At last, after five days, an end was put to the conflagration at the foot of the Esquiline hill, by the destruction of all buildings on a vast space, so that the violence of the fire was met by clear ground and an open sky. But before people had laid aside their fears, the flames returned, with no less fury this second time, and especially in the spacious districts of the city. Consequently, though there was less loss of life, the temples of the gods, and the porticoes which were devoted to enjoyment, fell in a yet more widespread ruin. And to this conflagration there attached the greater infamy because it broke out on the Aemilian property of Tigellinus, and it seemed that Nero was aiming at the glory of founding a new city and calling it by his name. Rome, indeed, is divided into fourteen districts, four of which remained uninjured, three were levelled to the ground, while in the other seven were left only a few shattered, half-burnt relics of houses.

It would not be easy to enter into a computation of the private mansions, the blocks of tenements, and of the temples, which were lost. Those with the oldest ceremonial, as that dedicated by Servius Tullius to Luna, the great altar and shrine raised by the Arcadian Evander to the visibly appearing Hercules, the temple of Jupiter the Stayer, which was vowed by Romulus, Numa's royal palace, and the sanctuary of Vesta, with the tutelary deities of the Roman people, were burnt. So too were the riches acquired by our many victories, various beauties of Greek art, then again the ancient and genuine historical monuments of men of genius, and, notwithstanding the striking splendour of the restored city, old men will remember many things which could not be replaced. Some persons observed that the beginning of this conflagration was on the 19th of July, the day on which the Senones captured and fired Rome. Others have pushed a curious inquiry so far as to reduce the interval between these two conflagrations into equal numbers of years, months, and days.

illness 662.ill.0116 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

A.D. 20-22

Without pausing in her winter voyage Agrippina arrived at the island of Corcyra, facing the shores of Calabria. There she spent a few days to compose her mind, for she was wild with grief and knew not how to endure. Meanwhile on hearing of her arrival, all her intimate friends and several officers, every one indeed who had served under Germanicus, many strangers too from the neighbouring towns, some thinking it respectful to the emperor, and still more following their example, thronged eagerly to Brundisium, the nearest and safest landing place for a voyager.

As soon as the fleet was seen on the horizon, not only the harbour and the adjacent shores, but the city walls too and the roofs and every place which commanded the most distant prospect were filled with crowds of mourners, who incessantly asked one another, whether, when she landed, they were to receive her in silence or with some utterance of emotion. They were not agreed on what befitted the occasion when the fleet slowly approached, its crew, not joyous as is usual, but wearing all a studied expression of grief. When Agrippina descended from the vessel with her two children, clasping the funeral urn, with eyes riveted to the earth, there was one universal groan. You could not distinguish kinsfolk from strangers, or the laments of men from those of women; only the attendants of Agrippina, worn out as they were by long sorrow, were surpassed by the mourners who now met them, fresh in their grief.

The emperor had despatched two praetorian cohorts with instructions that the magistrates of Calabria, Apulia, and Campania were to pay the last honours to his son's memory. Accordingly tribunes and centurions bore Germanicus's ashes on their shoulders. They were preceded by the standards unadorned and the faces reversed. As they passed colony after colony, the populace in black, the knights in their state robes, burnt vestments and perfumes with other usual funeral adjuncts, in proportion to the wealth of the place. Even those whose towns were out of the route, met the mourners, offered victims and built altars to the dead, testifying their grief by tears and wailings. Drusus went as far as Tarracina with Claudius, brother of Germanicus, and had been at Rome. Marcus Valerius and Caius Aurelius, the consuls, who had already entered on office, and a great number of the people thronged the road in scattered groups, every one weeping as he felt inclined. Flattery there was none, for all knew that Tiberius could scarcely dissemble his joy at the death of Germanicus.

Tiberius Augusta refrained from showing themselves, thinking it below their dignity to shed tears in public, or else fearing that, if all eyes scrutinised their faces, their hypocrisy would be revealed. I do not find in any historian or in the daily register that Antonia, Germanicus's mother, rendered any conspicuous honour to the deceased, though besides Agrippina, Drusus, and Claudius, all his other kinsfolk are mentioned by name. She may either have been hindered by illness, or with a spirit overpowered by grief she may not have had the heart to endure the sight of so great an affliction. But I can more easily believe that Tiberius and Augusta, who did not leave the palace, kept her within, that their sorrow might seem equal to hers, and that the grandmother and uncle might be thought to follow the mother's example in staying at home.

The day on which the remains were consigned to the tomb of Augustus, was now desolate in its silence, now distracted by lamentations. The streets of the city were crowded; torches were blazing throughout the Campus Martius. There the soldiers under arms, the magistrates without their symbols of office, the people in the tribes, were all incessantly exclaiming that the commonwealth was ruined, that not a hope remained, too boldly and openly to let one think that they remembered their rulers. But nothing impressed Tiberius more deeply than the enthusiasm kindled in favor of Agrippina, whom men spoke of as the glory of the country, the sole surviving off spring of Augustus, the solitary example of the old times, while looking up to heaven and the gods they prayed for the safety of her children and that they might outlive their oppressors.

religion 662.rel.004 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

he historical documents referring to Christ's life and work may be divided into three classes: pagan sources, Jewish sources, and Christian sources. We shall study the three in succession.

I. PAGAN SOURCES

The non-Christian sources for the historical truth of the Gospels are both few and polluted by hatred and prejudice. A number of reasons have been advanced for this condition of the pagan sources:

* The field of the Gospel history was remote Galilee;
* the Jews were noted as a superstitious race, if we believe Horace (Credat Judoeus Apella, I, Sat., v, 100);
* the God of the Jews was unknown and unintelligible to most pagans of that period;
* the Jews in whose midst Christianity had taken its origin were dispersed among, and hated by, all the pagan nations;
* the Christian religion itself was often confounded with one of the many sects that had sprung up in Judaism, and which could not excite the interest of the pagan spectator.

It is at least certain that neither Jews nor Gentiles suspected in the least the paramount importance of the religion, the rise of which they witnessed among them. These considerations will account for the rarity and the asperity with which Christian events are mentioned by pagan authors. But though Gentile writers do not give us any information about Christ and the early stages of Christianity which we do not possess in the Gospels, and though their statements are made with unconcealed hatred and contempt, still they unwittingly prove the historical value of the facts related by the Evangelists.

quote 339.quo.099 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

3. "I've been convinced for a long time that the flying saucers are interplanetary. We are being watched by beings from outer space."
---Albert M. Chop, deputy public relations director, NASA, True Magazine , Jan. 1965.


This quote was new to me. Clearly, however, the man had the necessary training to appreciate the phenomenon and worked in an environment where he must have had the requisite knowledge of actual facts and, again, he had nothing to gain and potentially plenty to lose by speaking the truth.

cathedral uu.8 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Jean Colarusso moved to La Jolla with her husband and three children in 1973 and visited Casa de las Pobres in Tijuana. For 25 years she has worked with the poor by adopting and educating families. On her visits to Mexico she brought supplies and assisted in providing medical care. She convinced UCSD Medical School to send medical students and local doctors to donate time; a priest donated land and Jean raised the money to build the clinic that continues today.

For over 20 years Jean has worked with Sister Antonia at the La Mesa Federal Penitentiary in Tijuana. She built a TB Sanitarium and workshop where inmates are able to sell wood carvings. She made mattresses from newspapers and taught schools to keep the prison supplied. In 1998 Jean met a Nigerian priest who asked for help building a boarding school for orphan boys. By selling the bricks, she was able to complete the structure. The Bishop of Nigeria took notice of her talents and asked her to help finish a Cathedral started 20 years earlier. From Jean’s sale of imaginary bricks, the Cathedral was done by January 2006.

Through her fundraising, over 100 Nigerian children call the Holy Family Children’s Center home. St. Kazito Minor Seminary is the only secondary school in Nigeria with internet. The Norween Walsh program to help Widows now has over 50 residents: the co-op raises over 200 chickens, sewing machines allow the women additional income. Jean is helping to double the size of an abandoned Nigerian church and will build another HIV center and hospice in a country with the highest rate of AIDS. A girl’s boarding school in Ida is also under construction.