One! I got there first!
Actually that’d be kind of funny. I’d like to see what sort of mental contortions he’d go through to justify WELL UHHH I’M STILL WINNING AMONGST THE SILENT MASSES WHO GOT LOST ON THEIR WAY TO THE POLL.
I’ll tell you what, if you can get 50 supporters, I’ll step away from the computer and give you a chance to regroup.
Count me as two!
Consarn it, guests apparently can’t post polls. 'Least not the nifty interactive BB code ones, anyway.
I’ll jus’ do an informal one, in the Pit.
…
I guess I could do it if people were really interested. What would you want the options/content/etc to be?
Does the poll feature even work in the Pit? I don’t think I’ve seen a poll here.
Our operators are standing by! Just two hundred more before noon, we get a matching grant from the Mother’s March Against Cognitive Dissonance!
(When we get to Hell, it will always be Pledge Week…)
Yeah, I just checked. With Cafe Society (for example) you get an option under creating a new thread to post a poll, but the same option isn’t there for the pit. I’m not sure that this poll would be appropriate for any other forums if it’s inherently nasty (“Is Ivan a dumbass?” or whatever). Maybe IMHO I guess.
I suppose we could make this easy by just saying - is there anyone who’s reading this who doesn’t think Ivan is a dumbass?
In a galaxy far, far away hundreds of thousands of years ago…
Space Alien President: Citizens! I propose we spend untold resources and unimaginable alien-hours over the next thousand years to develop the physics-bending technology that will allow us to travel to far and distant galaxies.
*
Space Alien Citizenry: And what will we do if we should we encounter life there?*
Space Alien President:* Write our name in their food, of course!*
The Mods can move it to IMHO or MPSIMS, but since it’s a beef with another poster, I reckon it otta stay here. Dunno.
So do you belive the military can be trusted, yes or no?
Space Alien Citizenry: Don’t forget the universal greeting. If we forget to probe their waste passages they might think we’re rude!
Wouldn’t that depend on whether or not the aliens had already got to them?
What about black stick men, ivan? They seem to be mainly a UK-centric bit of woo. Believe in them? Seen any?
Ha ha, yeah. It was mostly a rhetorical question. This thread has shown he will not answer any questions that have to be answered definatively. I was trying to point out the insanity of beliving that the military must be trusted when they say they have seen aliens yet that same military is the same people who are covering up and denying aliens existance.
Militaries in general, not really. They’re all planning on killing someone, and their reliability on getting it right and killing the right someone, leaves a lot to be desired.
Let me ask you a question.
If the militaries of the UK or USA had definitive proof that ufo’s were intelligently piloted vehicles, would you expect them to announce it to the world’s media?
Sure, why wouldn’t they? The idea that the public at large couldn’t handle it and mass hysteria would ensue is just a silly meme from 50’s sci-fi movies.
A couple of questions for you:
- What makes you think the military would have the ability to hide a far advanced technology that seems to jetting around willy-nilly in the sky?
- What would government gain by hiding the fact that aliens are visiting our planet?
I’m interested in your opinion.
The military in the US and UK are run by civilians. No matter what you think of the military mindset, they civilians that really run the show would make that decision. And I’m pretty sure the governments of the US and UK couldn’t keep that kind of information secret even if they wanted to.
Yes, I would. Because if there were proof of some unknown entity with unknown abilities, what happens to the military-industrial-space-national security budget? Through the roof, and up to the moon. We can’t waste money on a moon base–but there are aliens on the moon? Fuck it, we’re going.
The aliens could be used by the military as a propaganda tool to justify any sort of expense. And not the kind of crap expenses that they hate, like pensions for guys who got their legs blown off in Iraq. No, the stuff they love. We’re talking shiny technology, machines that go “ping”, endless research, and all in the name of national security. And no actually having to use the stuff to try to fight, you just build it and stockpile it and it doesn’t even have to work.
It doesn’t make any sense for the military or NASA to keep the alien threat secret. They didn’t exactly downplay the Soviet threat, or the Iraqi threat, did they?
Way, way back in the days of Project Blue Book, which I avidly followed as a youth, the primary motivation was to beat back rumors of Soviet super weapons. After all, if these amazing machines didn’t come from space, then they came from here. It was simpler to deny that they happened at all than to specify that they weren’t man made. And, since so many UFO reports were nothing more than hysteria, etc., their case was ready made.
(I was deeply disappointed when the Project Blue Book papers were released and I found out the entire team consisted of one 2nd Lt. and a couple of non-comms who simply released pre-written press releases.)
I was long of the opinion that maybe one out of a thousand of these reports was really something Other. I prided myself that I had never seen one, so my opinion was more objective than somebody who’d been probed. And then I saw something I cannot for the life of me explain, and I don’t know what to think. So, I don’t. Pretty much.
I lean towards the notion of self-replicating robots, programmed to explore and report back. Which explains their total passivity in regards to us, they weren’t built to contact, just look. If they exist, they aren’t doing anything. And of course, if they don’t exist, they can’t. So there is a kind of weird equivalence there.