Alien life? -- your take on the subject

I was browsing through my Amazon.com gold box offers this eve and this item popped up as one of the offerings. Thought you folks might like the opportunity to add it to holiday shopping/wish lists.

Mega Bloks Alien Agency: Alien Recovery Unit

Here's the editorial review:

From Toysrus.com & Amazon.com

Is a conspiracy theory more credible when it's immortalized in toy form? Or does that take away some of its believability? Whatever the answer, folks who are certain that an alien spacecraft crashed in New Mexico's Area 51 many years ago can now play out that scenario with the assistance of a MEGA BLOKS construction toy. Following the intricate instruction manual, you can build what at first appears to be a harmless garbage truck that just happens to be driven by FBI special agents Aven, Rock, and Poindexter (guess which one's the scientist!) on a routine trip through the desert. But open up the truck and it's revealed to be a roving alien container complete with a special containment tank--although the MEGA BLOKS bricks could fit together a little better. One feature we did enjoy was the alien construction kit. Pour the special included goo into one of six molds to make your own bewildered space traveler. --Charlie Williams

Two ideas;

first; in reference to Setanta's eloquent discription of the nature of intelligent life, and its relation to varying physical environments, and potential efforts at remote contact; would anyone here consider it wise to attempt to contact a species whose cultural samplings coming via electromagnetic radiation, consisted of stories of devastating violence, based on greed, territoriallity, and arrogance (not to mention 'news' transmissions of actual wars)? [that we have been blurting out for the last century; admittedly, a rather small 'window'!]

Secondly; with all the apparent knowledge, and technological knowhow evident here, would it not be time better spent to fabricate a suitable 'test' for phenomina, artifacts, testimony, etc., with which to assess the plethora of supposed 'evidence' choking cyberspace.

[and i add a serendipidous aside; i inadvertantly misspelled 'testimony' as 'teastimony' prior to editing - Freudian slip?]

Hmmm; i wonder if there are 'alien urls' on the internet?
UWWSs - "Unidentified Wierd WebSites"!

The search is on............................

Wolf et al.

The hostility you perceive in some of the sceptics' posts is because you cannot or will not conform to the normal rules of the game.

You may very well believe something to be true. Others (some no doubt in respected positions) may also believe. But belief is not enough.

If you desire to move from hypothesis to theory, you must produce evidence. No matter how respected the narrator, no one is exempt. If the Pope said Jesus is flying about in an extraterrestrial spaceship, I would want more than the Pope's word. Especially now the Vatican has renounced the principle of infallibilty.

Hell, I'll admit both of those. You can't say that UFOs definitely aren't alien craft, but you can't say they are either.

Just how much weight then should be placed on the taco-touters ... are they, in their devotion and conviction, lesser folk? I dunno ... faith is an odd thing. Sorta scary, really. "This must be the answer; it feels so RIGHT!. We must convert the infidel! It is our Duty!"

Frankly, a reasonably proved extraterrestrial craft would secure the jobs for years of just about all our elected officials. With that little observation it seems that Geo Bush, and all those who are dependent upon his good luck in the polls, and his good graces otherwise, would be looking for extraterrestrials under every leaf. :wink:

The Air Force general, The Hubble watchers, or the amateur astronomer that first noted one would be feted considerably, and probably would end up wealthy, famous, and revered.

The panic felt by the supersticious, and a feeling of uncertainty amongst even the most educated amongst us would assure whatever government was in power a cinchure. The starting of a war, or an increase of international dischord has been used by politicians to ensure their jobs since long before Phillip of Macedon jumped the Bosporus. Imagine the political benefits of an interplanetary crisis

In recent memory, Kennedy in the US, The Argentine junta in the Falklands, Hitler, Mao, Arafat and others have all attempted to ensure their power, perks, and priveleges by imagining and convincing their people that there was some sort of threat of one kind or another and assuring them that they were the only ones who knew all about this and also that they were the best qualified to handle this threat.
(Envision how much Kennedy's AND Kruschevs reputations were enhanced , in their respective countries, by the "Cuban Missile Crisis".)

Imagine what a boost to the political minded amongst us would be

For mostly this reason I am afraid that nobody has ever seen an extraterrestrial vessel, signal, or being of any sort. The immediate political benefits to the keepers of the public purse would easily outweigh any other considerations. (Especially since there is very little likleyhood of our being able to do anything about it anyways).

IMO, We'd be informed, quickly

I'll reserve my excitement until we find one/some.

akaMechsmith, the trouble with your thesis is that ufos have made no hostile gesture whatsoever, but rather seem to be implicated in pacifying the extremists in our midst. Several shining objects have been reported to shut down nuclear missiles and interfere in nuclear experiments. Not really the kind of publicity the more imperialist politician would like to divulge to the public. But all the more reason a military mind would go out of itself.

I do believe that intelligent life exists in the universe,outside of earth.Just go to the website on everything I post and you will see what I am involved in.
Only human arrogance allows us to think that we are alone in the galaxy.Personally,I think any intelligent life out there is sitting back looking at us and laughing like crazy.

Worrying like crazy would be more apt, I think.

You need to get your story together, Wolf. First you contend that the aliens, whom you know so well, have shown up to save us from ourselves, interferring in nuclear tests, etc. Now you say we should be worried. Which is it? Are they benign or dangerous? Since you seem to imply that you know so much about them . . .

It's the end of the world as we know it...
It's the end of the world as we know it...
It's the end of the world as we know it...
And I feel fine

I had been absent for a while, and so had some reading to do. BGW's comments about what we have broadcast, which is effectively our calling card brings some observations to my mind.

The first television signal winging its way out into the void is of Hitler opening the 1936 Olympic Games. Our reaction would be horror; but how do we know how other species might see this? Perhaps the ethos of another civilization would see an orderly group for which they had admiration. There is a great deal of projection on the part of humans onto their notions of what are supposed to be alien visitors or observers. The versions presented by the "ufology" fanatics are like comic book characters--descriptions of creatures who exist in relation to what we are and do, as opposed to realistic descriptions of intelligent, self-motivated beings responding to their own impulse, desires, and perceived imperatives.

If there is life elsewhere (an unknown) and such life has reach a level of technological sophistication (decreasing probability here) permitting interstellar voyaging (accelerating decreased probability), and such a society were willing to expend enormous recources to wander about the cosmos, poking around for someone to play with (entering the realm of the absurd here), why would we assume they would be so fascinated with us? Much of the alien visitation hoopla reeks of egoism.

I feel pretty damned good my own self, Monger . .


This is the end
Beautiful friend, the end . . .

Setanta, notch up your concentration a bit; I was responding to akamechsmith's with the reflexion that the ET beings probably rather worry like crazy than laugh like crazy. I don't know what brings ETs here, but I would speculate that the goals are benign and pacifying, as no overt threat has ever been witnessed on their behalf.

Second, you rightly suspect humans to project their own perception on what keeps ET visitors going. In your second paragraph, you then paradoxically project your own short sightedness. By bluntly portraying interstellar space travel as very improbable, and a motivated visit to another living planet as absurdly improbable, your own conservative character is highlighted in technicolor.

If those things would be so improbable, I'm confident of at least one thing: us humans wouldn't bother to explore space. Our whole endeavour as planetary technological lifeforms is precisely to find and then contact the others out there.

Which has happened already, the other way around.

Roses are red,
violets are blue.
Roses are watching me,
and violets are pawns of the military-industrial complex.


..Don't mind me Wolf, I'm just being weird (as usual).

My lips got to the beginning of a smile, but very shortly.

Wolf, my remarks on egoistic projection were not addressed to you, nor made with you in mind. The enormous costs in materials and resources for long-distance interstellar flight are not a projection of any "conservative" mindset of mine, but a reality imposed by the laws of physics. Pesky old science, it always seems a wet blanket. Before you posit absurdities about worm holes and faster-than-light travel, consider that you haven't offered a shred of proof for any of your wild assertions about alien visititations, and you will only dig the hole deeper with unsubstantiated contentions about physical sciences.

And keep in mind that the author of this thread has recently commented that the purpose was certainly not a discussion of UFO's.

Recently I've been contemplating the merits of telling my boss I know he's an alien. There are, for example, the telltale eating habits (space aliens might eat French fries with a spoon, the experts say), his highly bizarre sense of humor (space aliens who don't understand earthly humor may tell jokes that no one understands), and then there's the frequent talks with himself (an alien may not be used to speaking as we do, so an alien may practice speaking).

The experts point out that someone would have to display most if not all of these traits before you can positively identify them as a space alien.