Cool Stuff We Like

A good friend of mine just started blogging about technology, sci-fi, and motorcycles.  This posting about a guy who intentionally created a perception that the government was trying to shut up UFO witnesses is quite interesting:

Where did this whole notion of the "Men in Black" come from? Well, the answer to that question is, according to journalist John C. Sherwood, a fascinating story of deception and social engineering, or cultural engineering, perpetrated by a man named Gray Barker.

Gray Barker wrote about UFOs and paranormal phenomena in the Fifties and Sixties. In 1956 he published a book called They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, which introduced the Men in Black into the folklore of UFOs. Somehow, this concept of shadowy, mysterious agents in black suits, white dress shirts, pork-pie hats, and skinny ties, tooling around the countryside in black Lincoln Continental convertibles (with those cool suicide doors!) to intimidate witnesses to UFOs and Mothmen sightings just caught fire with the public imagination.