Dylan Ratigan and Steven Hawkin...phew!

That was a close....I flicked on MSNBC trying to catch up on a bit of news, and instead got blasted by Dylan Ratigan (the MSNBC Glen Beck wannabe) using confusing (and poor) analogies about banks and government bail outs. Anyhoo, so I was about to switch off and continue contemplating my naval when Rati shouted something about next up being Stephen Hawking warning about alien contact.

There was more than the usual hint of smug in his voice and so for a moment I thought it meant that I'd be witnessing the ignominy of Ratigan loudly debasing professor Hawking, unarguably one of humanity's greatest ever minds. I guess should’ve switched off then and there, my brain police were screaming at me to 'move along now, there’s nothing to see or learn here sir'. But, it was too late, my masochistic curiosity had been piqued; how would Rati's psuedo-intellect go about defaming a real thinker?

Alas, there was no need to worry, someone on the show had advised him not to question the professor, but simply pass on his observations.

The kafuffle was over an opinion the prof had offered in a new (Discovery Channel) show of his called Into The Universe. Apparently he'd suggested that it may not be the wisest thing for humanity to try and make contact with other intelligent alien civilizations, concluding that any we made contact with were likely to be nomadic and looking to colonize a planet. Therefore it was probably best to keep quiet in the first place.

Dylan played it safe by displaying a little of the skepticism of science that is expected of all God fearing Americans. He scoffed slightly as he pointed out the shocking findings of a formula called The Drake Equation, which scientists use to work out the probability of the existence of other intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way...numbers were crunched and the formula spewed out the likely number of intelligent societies as...drum roll...wait for it...10,000!

Dylan's reaction was no different to the rest of the US media who found themselves caught between a number of contradictions. Sensitive to the fact that we don't live in the 1950s anymore, they were unsure whether to laugh off the suggestion of there being other intelligent life out there or, scoff at the professor for inferring that the US military couldn't handle them if they did exist.

It's a different world today and humankind has moved on, and there's something scary about Professor Hawking speaking matter-of-factly about the existence of aliens. Furthermore he wasn't on about friendly ET types, but the nasty Mars Attacks/War of the Worlds type.

Ten fucking thousand and that’s just in our little galaxy!