Aaaaaaliens

Lots of stuff in the news tonight: pope back in the hospital; some asshole raping a 7-month-old baby; Mayor Daley and his cronies taking a big shit on a cemetery to expand O’Hare; 30-year-old teacher nailing 16-year-old student in her car, with her toddler strapped in the back seat; weather dude sweating snow we’ll probably never see.

And with all that going on, I watched the Peter Jennings UFO special. Oooohhh, aaaahhhh. My boys Stanton Friedman and Art Bell made their almost prerequisite appearances, but they also managed to get commentary from SETI particpants and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku.

The long and the short of it: nothing new. Anecdotes and discussion and little more. No, I didn’t expect them to show off an alien space ship or get an alien to do a little softshoe for us, but I thought they’d at least try to probe new territory (no pun intended). Just more of the same old stuff. The special discussed the probe landing on Titan, but apparently was filmed too long ago to mention the methane and new water ice discoveries on Mars that could indicate the presence of life.

So, while we’re a little closer to proving the folks suggesting there’s got to be life somewhere else in this vast universe, we’re still pretty much in the same place we were a couple weeks ago (and a couple months ago, and a couple years ago, etc.) despite some folks’ hopes with this special.

Regarding UFOs, I think Jennings himself said it best on last night’s Daily Show (paraphrasing slighty from memory): “I think people are seeing UFOs out there, I’m just not sure who’s driving them.”

Whatever. I’m about to shotgun a handful of potential titles for The Project at the prospective editor. Hopefully he’ll bite on one.