We all know that at least some so-called 'UFO' sightings are actually glimpses of military black projects.

Secret, highly experimental aircraft are almost certainly still out there. But fewer than there used to be. Budgets are tight. The military doesn't spend like a drunken sailor anymore. Military-industrial contractors have to fund their own research.

And overseas customers are far more important than they used to be. The US might be keeping the F-22 to itself, but the F-35 can't survive without lots of foreign buyers.

So these days, a new technology is as likely to end up in a promotional video as in the darkened skies above us.

But I bet that won't stop some of these weird and amazing craft from being mistaken for alien spacecraft.

For example, take Lockheed Martin's Various UAV, which is only at the  animated marketing video stage (officially at least. I bet there's one or two flying).

In spite of the swept wings, it's a subsonic craft. Those wings have long chords at the root to accommodate vertical lift fans. It's an amazing piece of kit. But alien it ain't.

I’m getting friend requests on MySpace and Facebook that have me worried. It’s not that I’m unfriendly. If people want to friend me, I usually say yes, so long as they include some info on where they saw my details and how come they’re getting in touch.

And I’ve come to recognize spammers - those impossibly friendly girls who seem to have trouble keeping their clothes on.

No, what worries me is how the authorities might be using social networking. They don’t have to spy on us any more. We’re doing the job for them. I read how some researchers can now use people’s friends lists to work out if they’re gay.

If one individual becomes a ‘person of interest’ to the authorities, then anyone associated with them, however remotely, is also under suspicion.
Intelligence agencies learn a lot through what they call ‘traffic analysis’. They monitor messages travelling across phone, email and other networks. They don’t care about what’s in the messages, but who’s sending them, who’s receiving them, and when they’re sent.

For example, let’s say the NSA is monitoring a group of people it thinks might be terrorists. A message gets sent out by one of the group to three people. The content of the message is encrypted, or maybe it’s in plain text but using a secret message that means nothing to the NSA. Zero intelligence, you might think. But immediately, each of those three recipients sends out identical (or identically sized) messages to three more people. And those new recipients do the same. Even without understanding the contents of the message, the NSA has a fully mapped chain of command for the terrorist group. And if some recipients weren’t on their original watchlist … well they are now.

A social network is a rich hunting ground for traffic analysts. And what’s really worrying is just how dumb some of this analysis might be.
Let’s say someone with an interest in radical ideas - let’s call him M - goes to a party. Someone else at the party takes a snap of M and puts the picture on their Facebook page. They tag M. Then they notice that you’re in the picture, too - not with M, but in the background. They tag you.

The NSA’s computers regularly scour the net. M is on their list of names to watch for. They pick up M in the tag - and they pick up you in the same image. As of now, you’re ‘associated’ with M. The computer isn’t smart enough to work out that you’re busy trying, and failing, to get off with the goth girl who’s just outside of the photograph’s frame. The computer has no way of knowing that you didn’t speak to M the whole evening, have never met him, and to this day have no idea that he exists.

Perhaps some human at the NSA will eventually view the image and decide that your association with M is coincidental and circumstantial. Perhaps not. Either way, you’re on a list.

Think this can’t happen? Google the story of Maher Arar. And his detention and torture resulted from more old-fashioned intelligence gathering. Now, the discovery of these kinds of accidental links is automated. Welcome to the world of self-surveillance.

President Obama's cancelling of the Moon mission is meant to save money - but at what cost to the human spirit?

NASA's new budget means that the International Space Station (ISS) will continue to fly until 2020. But it's unlikely to get funding beyond that. Maybe we can do some good science up there in the next decade. But it's not long, is it? And when the money runs out, NASA will send the ISS screaming in flames into the ocean, at the cost of about $2 billion - that's just to shut the damn thing down.

Long before then, the Shuttle will have stopped flying. If the Ares I isn't finished soon, US astronauts will be hitching rides on Russian rockets to get to the ISS.

What the hell has happened to our sense of adventure and our longing to explore?

The Moon landings happened before I was born. There wasn't a single year of my life when there wasn't a space mission in progress. For me, space exploration means people flying on rockets, putting their lives on the line to expand mankind's horizons.

Space exploration will continue, of course - with unmanned probes and robots. And they're great. But there's something even greater about a human going physically into that realm.

And yeah, I got a buzz when George W Bush talked about going to Mars. For about five minutes. Then I realised he was bullshitting (I know, big surprise). He was just trying to lay claim to Mars with a tenth-rate copy of John F Kennedy's speech about going to the Moon. Kennedy helped that happen. Bush was just trying to carve some piece of posterity for himself, something good that people could remember about him - as if we'd forget all the shit he did.

But anyway ... it's all been downhill from there. The bankers stole all our money and one of the consequences is that we can no longer afford to enlarge the boundaries of our knowledge. The cancellation of the Moon mission is just a way of coming to terms with financial reality. But somehow it makes us less human.

Yeah, I know, I haven't posted in a while. It's been a long, strange holiday season.

I got fired by the Inquisitor - twice. Then rehired both times. But that wasn't the strange thing - they do that all the time here. It's a way of keeping people on their toes, or reducing wages. Usually both.

No, the weird part of it was that I got fired for not putting enough fear in my stories. "We're in the fear business," said Robin, my editor. First time I've heard of it. I thought we were in the truth business. Selah.

There have been all kinds of odd edicts coming down from on high, about the words we can and can't use in the publication, that sort of stuff. I think some of it's from corporate. But some sounds more official. Like we're now supposed to use the term 'Un-American' instead of 'foreign' or 'international'. I think that one came from the Government.

Even away from the office, things are getting weirder. Several times now I've been followed, sometimes aggressively, while driving. And has anyone else noticed the appearance of military Humvees on the streets? Or is that just Reno?

Anyway, I'll tell more in future posts. At least I can use this blog - it's still the case that no-one at the Inquisitor reads it. I'm not convinced they can read.

A while back, the Inquisitor ran a story about how we are all going to be chipped, sooner or later. Well, for me it turned out to be sooner.

That's why I haven't posted for a while. I thought I was depressed. I now realise I'm afraid.

It happened a few weeks ago. A normal Tuesday, or so I thought. Got to work slightly late, looking forward to another day of humiliation, defeat and futility. And I found the office deserted. It wasn't lunchtime, or anywhere within two hours of lunchtime, so I knew something was up.

We have this receptionist who specializes in making my life hell. She's a vicious, baying-for-blood bull-dyke with all the charm of a wounded doberman on PCP. She's called Petal. Anyway, after verbally savaging me for a while, she eventually said I was expected in the meetings room. I didn't know we had a meetings room. She seemed to relish the prospect of me entering a door I had never seen before.

They were all in there, the whole staff of the Inquisitor, rubbing their arms. It wasn't what I was expecting - just an empty office littered with the detritus of whatever failed business had last fled owing back rent. The team was in one corner looking even more morose than normal for this early in the morning. In the other corner was a nurse standing by a table.

She gave me a look. I shudder still when I think of it. Nurse Ratched would have walked in fear of this woman.

Maybe that's why the rest of my experience in that room is such a blur. I remember her checking my name against the computer. Selecting a chip the side of a grain of rice and putting it in a small gun-like device. And then firing it into my arm. "Welcome to the American Century, big boy," she said. It didn't sound welcoming.

Now, every time I enter or leave the building something beeps. Yesterday, Petal took great delight in showing the log on her computer screen that listed the precise time and date I entered and left each room in the building, including the restroom. I spend longer in there than I thought. You can imagine what Petal made of that.

I swear I can feel the little RFID chip in my arm like it's some kind of infection. Everywhere I go I feel like I'm broadcasting something. I don't know what, but it makes me feel guilty. It's like I've been branded the way criminals once were. Like I've been reduced to a number, a serial number to be processed.

This morning I went into Starbucks and something beeped.