My turn: Our behaviors are quite alien

Scientists estimate that there are 300 sextillion (300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars in the 14-billion-year-old universe — which, because of expansion, is approximately 158 billion light years across.

There are potentially trillions of planets orbiting these stars — many of them billions of years older than our sun, allowing time for the evolution of complex life.

Extraterrestrial civilizations may well have developed spacecraft.

However, considering that the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 270,000 times farther than our Sun — the chance of aliens visiting Earth is about as likely as death panels existing in the Affordable Care Act (despite the claim of space cadet Sarah Palin).

And, with the technology to reach Earth, why can't UFOs avoid crashing in Roswell?

If we should send a manned spacecraft to another planet with beings still fighting with sticks and stones, I imagine that they would consider us gods.

Just imagine the profit.

We could sell them: exotic derivatives, then charge exorbitant management fees; fatty foods, then hawk diet pills; cigarettes, then keep raising prices; health insurance, then refuse to cover conditions caused by fatty foods and smoking.

We could make a fortune by selling competing tribes surplus hand grenades, mines and flame throwers.

Then we could demand that each tribe tithe us 10 percent to protect them from each others' attacks — provoked by their competing gods.

Cargo hold bulging with their natural resources, we'd then zoom back home — feeling proud about saving them and our way of life.

Contact Wendel Sloan at [email protected]