Aliens

Steven Hawking, the world-famous physicist, said something yesterday that I've believed for a long time: aliens exist, and we should not be in a hurry to contact them. I've never seen an alien, and neither has Hawking, but there are billions of galaxies and billions of star systems in each one and yet more planets in each of those. The odds are overwhelming.

I've heard people say how they would like to meet an alien, to go up on a spaceship and just hang out. But not me. I get nervous around strangers in general, even the perfectly nice ones who don't want to dissect me and eat my liver.

One argument is that only kind and good beings will be able to advance to the point of space travel, therefore we can trust the space travellers. Wishful thinking. So far, we like to keep our morality confined to our our species for the most part. Cows, pigs and chickens are being treated in criminal ways each day. And even within our species we often exploit the smallest differences in detail and use them in unkind and ungood ways, like with this new immigration bill in Arizona.

Yes, we should fear the extraterrestrial aliens, because we just can't predict if human nature is the exception or the rule in the universe.

And apparently great minds think alike:


Anyway, I've spent a whole day wondering about aliens and I'm no closer to getting started on the bathroom project. Maybe tomorrow...