Are there religious aliens?

Anyone with a lick of sense knows life exists throughout the universe. It's everywhere (that it can be). But the size of the universe means it's going to be a long, long time before we meet intelligent aliens. When that day finally comes, do you think they'll be religious?

I think if they haven't been around for much longer than we have, there's a good chance that religion will play a role in their society. Let me say the same thing another way: if they're as primitive as we are, they may well believe in gods.

They might even have similar god myths. After all, like us these aliens exist because of evolution. They will have traveled a similar, bloody path from primitive life form to their current existence as intelligent beings. And all along that route, like us, they would have tried to explain reality to themselves. And that means they might have invented gods, especially in their most primitive days.

After all, what are gods but a way to try to understand what we fear and cannot otherwise explain? I'll bet even dogs have wild notions about reality drawn from their basic lack of understanding of the world around them. Does Fido believe in a god (other than his owner)? Maybe that's pushing it but I'll bet there's a corollary.

Primitive = religious. So could an alien race that arrived in a spaceship be religious? Probably not. Their arrival in such a vehicle would imply an advanced understanding of science and likely the ability to travel at some high fraction of the speed of light. I figure a race like that would have thrown off notions of god long ago.

Of course, the worst nightmare would be if they were religious. If we can't handle the minor differences that exist between our religions here on Earth, can you imagine how we'd deal with alien gods? I can just see the Fox news coverage now!

Maybe I'll write a short story about this. Fun idea.

So this is what blogging gets you

Yesterday I skipped work, a rarity for me. But it was called for since my cousin Carmine was visiting. We sat around laughing all day. It's what we do.

But here's the thing: it was so weird to see someone who knows all kinds of stuff about my life because he reads my blog every day! I hadn't expected this and it was great. Why, it was exactly as if I wasn't writing into a void!

I guess all bloggers experience this, eh? I should have expected it. Has this happened to you? And did it please you as much as it did me?

On becoming a cartoon

I wonder if I'm alone in a perception I've been having. It seems to me that many of my old friends and acquaintances have turned into cartoons of themselves. Any echoes from the crowd?

I used to respect these people but they've literally morphed into absurd notions of themselves. It's as if they lost their bearings one day and drifted off. I can't even connect the dots between their current and former selves.

I don't know why it happened and I can't talk about it with them because . . . well, they're cartoons. It's bizarre.

Have you seen this phenomenon?

The mad editor

Well, I'm editing but I'm not quite mad -- more like exhausted. I've been editing Xmas Carol for a couple of weeks now and I'm halfway through the book. In the process, I've come to realize that what I'm doing isn't editing. It's a total rewrite, a much bigger task.

And it's going well. As I said in an earlier post, I axed an entire story-line and excised a character. (I feel I should put them in aluminum foil and store them in my freezer. You never know when you might need a good character or storyline.)

But phew, what a lot of work. Writing books is a joyful, easy thing but editing them into final shape is a whole 'nother animal. It's a mountain of work. 

 Anyway, this has been my report from the trenches. Over and out.

Nice stuff over on the graphics blog

I put two fun videos up on my cheesy-graphics version of this blog today, plus a photo of folks ice-skating on our pond. If you can stand the bandwidth, come on over.

A good thing happened this week

These days it's rare to see a story about people acting selflessly to help others. Yet there was one such story this week. You know you want to feel better. So go ahead: click the link below. G'wan.

Egyptian Muslims act as human shields for Copts.

I found it at Think Progress this morning.

Blogger quirks that drive me nuts

Overall, blogger (or blogspot) seems to be a nice place to set up digs. But it does have its irritating quirks. If you blog, do these things drive you crazy too?

Magic paragraph spacing
Extra spaces appear randomly between paragraphs. Sometimes there's a huge space between each of them. At other times, only between some. You try to axe the spaces but they just migrate. When you go back to look at your post, there's a space in another place. This can go on for some time and it drives me crazy. 

Only being able to upload photos now and then
This isn't the worst thing ever since you can always upload photos by mailing them to your blog. Still, why is a simple task like uploading a sometime thing at Blogger? 

Ever-changing Stats
I like the idea of statistics for the blog. But they don't really tell you anything you can trust. Stats might say you had 35 visitors today, but when you look the next day, it says only one person visited the day before. And they change throughout the day. I find that late in the day, you get meager stats. But early on, you think your blog is a happening thing. Why can't they be accurate? 

The skewing of audience stats because of Next Blog
I mentioned the other day here about the "Next Blog" button up on top of the page. People apparently click it. Why, I've even done it a few times. This brings random visitors -- and a skewing of the statistics. I've already written about my bitter sorrow upon finding out I'm not a hit in Somalia, after all. Kill the Next Blog button. Random people don't want to visit your blog, so why invite them in? Every blog is a special interest blog and you only want folks from within that group -- be it parents, sane people, religious nutjobs, atheists, liberal folks or nuns -- to visit your blog.

Does anything else drive you nuts here? Mind you, as I said at the outset, I'm also happy to be here. These may drive me a bit nuts at times, but they're really minor irritations in the long run.  We get a blog out of it, and that makes it worth the aggravation.