Aliens

Is there intelligent life on other planets?  Well, the universe has billions of galaxies, and if you assume that just one galaxy in a million has one planet like earth, then that's thousands of worlds out there! Maybe there's a world where Hitler won the war.  But they're clearly too far away for any chance of communication. (Light and radio signals take millions of years to travel between galaxies.) I have a feeling that even if another planet knew of us, they'd be prudent enough to leave us alone.

Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the Milky Way?  I'd guess there's a pretty good chance that our planet has no counterpart in the galaxy.  All the requisite condition coming together with the result of intelligent live evolving--stuff like the moon being big enough to create tides, so sea life will spread onto land--all that faces steeper odds than winning a lottery.  Intelligent life is a miracle even great than we know.

I've never seen a U.F.O.  I wish I would someday.  But I have seen some science fiction movies from the 1950s involving aliens landing on the earth.  The interesting thing about them is their obvious Cold War subtext.  Some of them, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and War of the Worlds and Invaders From Mars, play on the period's paranoia and fear of The Other.  But there are some with a more liberal vision, like The Day the World Stood Still and It Came From Outer Space.  More recently there was Signs.  When I saw that one I liked it at first, but the next day I decided it was nonsense.