Close Encounter For the Third Time

Close Encounters of the Third Kind was on earlier, so that accounts for the "alien" theme today.  It's one of my favorite movies, plus I was annoyed at some political posts I read on Facebook. Some people's thought processes truly are alien.

I kinda get carried away with something at times. I think I'll get off the 'net for a while, because my very favorite sci-fi movie is on now: Blade Runner. While I am sometimes prone to argue over politics, I think arguing about movies is silly. The only thing I'd want to discuss about Blade Runner is if you think Deckard is a Replicant or not.

First Contact

An alien landed on Earth and the first person he met was a tall, good looking woman. Awed by her beauty, he finally managed to speak:

"Take me to a ladder lady, I'll meet your leader later."

Government Explained

An inquisitive alien visits the planet to check on our progress as a species, and gets into a conversation with the first person he meets. The alien discovers that we live under the rule of a thing called "government", and wants to understand more about what "government" is, what it does, and why it exists.




If you don't want to sit through the entire 9 1/2 minutes of the video, then you can read the transcript.

billet-doux

From the Word of the Day:

billet-doux (bɪlɪˈduː, French bijɛdu)

— n , pl billets-doux old-fashioned , jocular or a love letter

[ from French, literally: a sweet letter, from billet + doux sweet, from Latin dulcis ]

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I'd be afraid to ask a woman if she'd like a billet-doux; unless she was French, she'd probably slap me.  OTOH, if she was French, she might slap me anyway.

I Side With

I saw a link to ISideWith.com on Facebook earlier and decided to take their test. Most of the regular readers of this blog (all six of you) already know I am a Ron Paul supporter, but I wanted to see if this survey would validate my choice.

It did.

I try to not get too involved in politics here;  I don't care to debate them and have always wanted my blog to be light hearted and educational if possible. Still, this was an interesting thing to do.

Click graphic for larger view.

I was a little surprised that it was "only" 93%, but that might have been due to a few of my choices where I put I didn't think the federal govt. should be involved, whereas Paul's stance would have been leave it up to the states. A minor difference to me, but perhaps not to him. Another difference was that maybe I didn't attach enough significance to certain issues, such as gay marriage or attaching the most as I did with gun control.   I expect that if I waited a while and took the test again, the numbers might skew a few points one way or the other.  That doesn't mean I'm wishy-washy, just that I might feel a little stronger towards some issues after a while and deeper reflection and less so on others afterwards.

I think the most pressing concern to us is economics;  none of the rest of the issues will matter if we don't get our debt under control and unemployment down to a minimum.   I'm also for change in regards to our immigration policy and that of the war on drugs because our current policies aren't working. 

I was a little surprised that it showed me to have that much in common with the Republican party.  The way they've treated Ron Paul and we libertarian-minded conservatives has driven many of us away from the GOP.   I think both they and the Democrats have morphed into two sides of the same coin - a plugged nickel.

I think my libertarian viewpoints mirror my Texas upbringing, namely that it's an innate thing for most Texans to want to mind our own business, to allow others to do as they like just as long as it doesn't affect us in a dangerous  or overly annoying manner.

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Edit to add: While watching the live NASA feed of the control room monitoring the Curiosity as it touched down on Mars, it dawned on me one of the reasons that I didn't mesh up with Ron Paul more than I did; I am in favor of govt. funding for space exploration, at least I have been. I doubt we would have already landed on the moon if it were not for the massive funding of the space program. However, it looks like private space projects are now in the works..

I'd also like to clarify that I do not belong to the Libertarian Party. I agree with most of their platform, but not all. I consider myself a "small L" libertarian.