Ted Rall for July 02, 2021

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    Concretionist  almost 3 years ago

    Science depends on repeatability… or at least multiple people looking at the same data and getting similar outcomes. Science doesn’t deal AT ALL well with unique events or even widely spaced similar events reported by different people. So we can’t use “Science” to deal with whatever the current term is for UFOs. But we can use Occam’s Razor… and that tells us that widely separated individually different reports of “doesn’t behave like anything I’ve ever seen” is probably a glitch in the system, somewhere. Because that’s what it usually is when you see something oddball, and Occam prefers that we not unduly create new causes.

    COULD they be real? You betcha. ARE they real (and from a small set of “non-glitch” causes)? I dunno. And would I know if I read the report in detail? Nope.

    PS: If there really are extraterrestrial visitors, then Occam’s Razor is one of their best tools.

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    T Smith  almost 3 years ago

    Today is the anniversary of the Civil Rights Act 0f 1964 — Republikans plan to commemorate it by celebrating the gutting the Voting Rights Act by ideologues on SCOTUS.

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    PraiseofFolly  almost 3 years ago

    —) Aliens do indeed pilot some of the UFOs. That is the conclusion of Military Specialists, that have detected messages from the craft to a point in the Luyten’s star system, in Canis Minor. The system is 12.2 light years distant. GoComics has gained access to portions of a secret report. The Military figures no one takes cartoonists seriously, so breach of security is not an issue.

    Advanced computer decryption, indicates the Earth is the equivalent of a mismanaged Nature Preserve. Those pilots are Forest Rangers assigned to what they consider a bum detail. The messages are consistent pleas to be reassigned, the gist of them being, “How do we get out of this chickens—t outfit?”

    Earth Patrol is ostensibly punishment detail for bad pilots, and they get bored. Although they must serve their terms, they don’t necessarily do so honorably. Despite directives, they play games with radar installations, popping in and out of tracking screens, making short visual appearances and then zooming off at incredible speed powered by “inertialess “ drives. It is the equivalent of shining a laser pointer on the ground to tease a cat.

    Alien headquarters notice, but actually don’t really care. Earth is a nice enough planet, but the dominant species (or so it thinks) is doomed to self-destruction in short order. Indeed, Alien scientists eagerly speculate what creatures evolve to dominance next. (—

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  4. Mr haney
    NeedaChuckle Premium Member almost 3 years ago

    As Calvin opined no intelligent life would ever bother to come here!!

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    mourdac Premium Member almost 3 years ago

    A decent summary of the UFO report: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/27/politics/ufos-uap-extraterrestrial-life/index.html

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    StackableContainers  almost 3 years ago

    Not really stupid…more like willfully deliberately ignorant.

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    charliekane  almost 3 years ago

    (:^)

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    Teto85 Premium Member almost 3 years ago

    Mostly Harmless.

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  9. John adams1
    Motivemagus  almost 3 years ago

    While there are – and always have been – unidentified flying objects, that doesn’t make them aliens.

    It is extremely unlikely that aliens even exist overlapping with us in the vast time and space of our universe, let alone can travel here.

    Physicists love using the Carl Sagan “billions and billions” argument – there must be someone out there if there are so many stars with so many planets!

    But anthropologist Irven DeVore used to debate Sagan on this point: our own evolution required a large number of unlikely events to fall a certain way. It is extremely unlikely for this to happen anywhere else in a way that would produce an intelligent alien at all, let alone one that we might even be able to communicate with – that is, they may be intelligent, but not like us. And given that we have had technological civilization for a bit over a century or so – depending on what you count – out of 4.54 billion years of Earth’s history, what are the odds that there is another species that just happened to evolve around the same time as us?

    Some folks have tried to analyze this. Sara Seager at MIT, using estimates of the number of exoplanets as of 2009, estimated that the number of intelligent species in the Milky Way Galaxy right now would be two (2). The Milky Way Galaxy is 100-200 million light years across with 100-400 million stars. We’re unlikely to be anywhere near each other.

    Atmospheric scientist Andrew Watson at the University of East Anglia has also made an estimate based on the probability of evolutionary steps and habitable planets. His model suggests the chance of intelligent life emerging is less than 0.01 percent over four billion years. But, again, they have to have sufficient technology to communicate, AND survive long enough to do it, AND overlap with us in that four billion years of time.

    And of course they have to want to talk to us or be seen by us…

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    ferddo  almost 3 years ago

    They are right. If we can whip ourselves into frenzies over imagined potential attacks from foreigners here on Earth, then quickly move onto the next “crisis” that the tabloids present, we are too stupid to focus (at least).

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    NatureBatsLast  almost 3 years ago

    Just another distraction from what’s really bearing down on humanity.

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    Radish the wordsmith  almost 3 years ago

    During the history of UFO sightings their technology is always a step ahead of ours, they are like teasing us and showing the way.

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    grumpypophobart  almost 3 years ago

    “UFO’s are real!” Yet we haven’t had any visitors call up to say they are here. I wonder why that is? Could it be that any self respecting alien, having watched humanity for five minutes, declares Earth not worth the trouble?

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    wildthing  almost 3 years ago

    The only reason manned space flight hasn’t advanced as far as projected in the movie 2001 is because we never found an alien monolith on the moon. Fuzzy pictures of UFOs just don’t cut it.

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    wildthing  almost 3 years ago

    I’m more interested in what the James Webb Space Telescope will show us.

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    Night-Gaunt49[Bozo is Boffo]  almost 3 years ago

    A universal mind that we are in contact with and has no emotion and can create matter from energy in a lower frequency. Where we are in the scheme. For some reason it wants us to believe what its manifestations are alien craft and its occupants. Before our time they were seen as gods, angels, demons, monsters from Hell etc.

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    apfelzra Premium Member almost 3 years ago

    If alien life forms came to earth searching for intelligent life, it could be difficult to locate.

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    GaryCooper  almost 3 years ago

    “Too stupid to notice or care” pretty much sums up the nature of humans.

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    359mxn  almost 3 years ago

    If there is some intelligent being that has the capabilities that are being observed then they have the capabilities of staying that way.

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