The UFO cult

I do not believe that we have been visited by extra-terrestrials. However, I do think it is quite possible, even likely, that intelligent life has emerged in many places in the universe. The universe is an immensely large place with an estimated 1022 stars within the visible part and since we know that the probability of intelligent life, let alone any kind of life, emerging is not zero (since it has happened here), it is not hard to imagine that it also emerged elsewhere.

What I do not believe is that they visited here, simply because of the vast distances that they would have had to travel, even if they originated on a planet of the nearest star to the Sun. To be able to traverse such distances would require some spectacularly new science and technology that is unlike anything that we know, that is also able to circumvent the limits of the speed of light and the lifetimes of organisms that seem to be so firmly based.

Furthermore, the idea that they have arrived and are playing coy by giving us just hints of their visits, and that the government is covering up those visits, adds another layer of implausibility. Why go to all the trouble of interstellar travel just to take a peek and go away? To arrive here would require incredibly sophisticated technology. To think that they were able to do that only to have their craft crash in the desert in the US, not just once but several times, just compounds the unbelievability.
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The student loan problem

John Oliver explains why so many students in the US acquire such large college debts and have a hard time paying off their loans. It is a familiar story. A government program meant to serve a good end is handed over to the supposedly efficient private sector to manage, which then turns out to be both inefficient and corrupt and results is people making loan payments for decades while making hardly a dent in the principal.

Oliver says that Joe Biden, over the objections of Republicans and obstacles placed by the US Supreme Court, has actually managed to eliminate or reduce student debt for a considerable number of people.

John Oliver takes on Boeing

His show Last Week Tonight looked at the decline in quality of aircraft produced by the company after the merger with McDonnell Douglas, when the focus shifted from producing high quality planes to worshipping at the shrine of the holy capitalist trinity of increased profits, share prices, and executive compensation.

Much of the factual information he presented had been covered in more depth in the 2022 documentary Downfall that I reviewed two months ago, but this was shorter, is more accessible to the general public, and Oliver adds his usual humorous touch.

The real choice before us

Joe Biden’s feisty State of the Union address may not have had any immediate impact on voters but it does seem to have had an impact on media coverage of his age. I notice much less chatter about it now, except in the right wing media world. I hope the real differences between him and his rival become more of the focus.

The power of metadata and the photo puzzle

I am not a very tech savvy person and so am constantly being surprised by what modern technology can do. Take for example, the current kerfuffle over the doctored photo released by the British royal family. I am amazed at what could be gleaned from the photo.

David McCoy, the imaging manager at the Guardian, said: “The first step in analysing this image is reading through the file’s embedded metadata to determine the photographic settings of the base camera image. In this case, we can see that a Canon 50mm f1.2 lens was used for this initial image, set to an aperture of f3.2, which will give moderately shallow depth of field.

That is pretty impressive, to me at least, but the article goes on to describe all the other things that were inferred.

The whole thing is a minor puzzle. I am not sure why the photo needed to be doctored at all and why, given their resources, they could not have hired a professional to do a better job that would not have aroused suspicions in the first place.

Michael Kosta of The Daily Show joked that he knew at once, even without any forensic analyses, that the photo had been doctored because you can never get three children to all smile at the same time for a photo.

Jon Stewart on who the ‘real’ Americans are

He discusses something that has also long irritated me, and that is the claims by GOP politicians that ‘real’ Americans are those that live in the middle parts of the country in rural areas, as if the vast majority who live in cities and the coastal areas count for less.

This is part of a more general pattern. GOP politicians seem to think it is perfectly acceptable to sneer at big cities and the diverse array of people who live in them as somehow being less worthy, while reacting with outrage if any Democratic politician even slightly disparages rural white America.

Katie Britt gets brutally roasted on SNL

Katie Britt has now essentially confirmed that the story that she told in her response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address was misleading in all the key details, as was exposed by journalist Jonathan Katz, though in typical MAGA fashion, still claims that it is ‘true’ in some unspecified sense.

Actor Scarlett Johansson did a brutally funny takedown of Britt on Saturday Night Live, capturing all her manic, hyper-dramatized mood swings.