All alone in space and time
Greetings gentle reader, silpheed here. It may shock you to learn that this site was not my first attempt at blogging. Back in 2001 I was a writer for a now defunct blog, though back in those days they weren't called blogs, they were E/N sites. Well this evening I happened to find a backed-up stash of posts, and boy did I suck!
However, there were some pieces of crap that didn't stink as bad as the rest. The next few posts will be shameless cut-and-paste reruns of what I wrote back then. Think of it as though it were Seinfeld, it never gets old!
Aliens. Love them or hate them, they don't give a hovering fuck about you.
Unless you're some sort of religious, guy, then you'd have to agree that there is a real chance that we are not alone in our universe. And I wanna see aliens! The problem with space is, it's huge, some believe infinite. And the problem with spaceships is, they don't exist, well earthly ones don't. So us going out in our imaginary spaceships and looking for specks of blue and green amidst infinite black just isn't rational. Looking for extraterrestrials without spaceships isn't much of an idea either, the best we can do is plant fossils in a rock from Mars, which was found on Earth anyway. So what's the alternative? Do what humans do best. Nothing. And yet at the same time show the boss we're doing something.
We spend millions of dollars pointing our technologies to the skies listening for UFO exhausts and static crackles that sound a little less crackly and what do we get? A sense that at least we're trying. Thankfully most of this wasted money is American, although that means a mostly American mentality towards alien hunting.
The theory is sound. Let more advanced beings do the work in contacting us and save squillions at the same time. Until we find our first alien, it will remain an unproven theory, and really the fat kid of science that no-one likes. It's boring, slow, and contains no laser guns or planets full of naked warrior women. And even if they did contact us, they're just as likely to say "surrender your planet or die" as "will you please stop sending those damn SMS messages".
Actually that's a point that shouldn't be laughed at. If we did make contact, how would we tell the harmless, funny Alfs from the dangerous, evil Klingons, or even the well meaning, yet temperamental and superior Chewbaccas? Sure, they may seem helpful, with their new technologies and calm nature, but from their point of view they would probably see barely sentient slaves with a resource-rich planet ripe for the picking. Maybe it's best to leave sleeping quarlites lie and evolve our technologies at our own pace. And yes, that's all the respective governments are interested in, advanced technologies.
Or perhaps they already have made contact. Late night TV tells me that this is the case, either through secret government dealings or via ancient civilisations. I really don't know what to think. On one hand, a lot of what these supposedly professional people say makes sense, yet I question their medium of trashy magazines and cheesy, almost infomercial TV shows. And folk of the caravan park don't make the most convincing witnesses either. Or maybe the aliens went straight to the government, in the belief that a government would know what to do best with their people. Maybe the visitors aren't that intelligent. Unfortunately for us layfolk, the government is the only source for all space related information. If our closest neighbour, Proxima Centauri blew up today, due to the tyranny of distance it would be four years before anyone would know about it. That's long enough for a new government to be voted in to tell us it never happened. The Fox Mulders of this world tell us that governments, mainly the American and Russian governments, know all about little green men and their activities. I think this is unlikely. These people can't keep their affairs and drinking habits quiet, let alone the biggest and possibly hardest to hide secret of all.
Well that was a waste of your time. None of us are any closer to knowing the truth and yet I have so much more I want to write, I might write a semirelated post later on. If we made contact with other intelligent beings in my lifetime, I would die a happy man. They may exist, or they may not. Don't put on your sneakers and drink your arsenic apple juice just yet.
Ho ho, what a crazy little anti-American nutjob I was. Today I live with my Amercian girlfriend and I loved the last James Bond movie. Let's see what shit I can pull out of the vault next time.
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I have read this before.
I want to go back to being an awkward little nerd that lives for writing his D-grade satire websites. *siiigh*
I'm sure it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to get back on that particular bike, would it Ry? :P
A lot of people say its a "romantic" idea that there is exotic alien life out in the universe, but personally i like the idea that we're a complete aberration of nature, and we overrate this intelligence we keep banging on about (which is simply highly complex behavioural patterns, which any other animal has a less complex and often more efficient version of) , and that we'll be duly selected out of existence because of this attribute, not take over the entire universe. That on a geological time-span we're a minute experiment and after our flash in the pan the rest of the universe gets on with more interesting things. If humans are so intelligent, why do they continue to spend money on a SETI program that has no garauntees, instead of spending it on a vast number of any other thing that would be more immediately beneficial, like a new shuttle design, perhaps. That thing is seriously falling apart. Or even, you know, that stuff that keeps us alive, what is it? oh yeah MEDICINE. "Sorry Mr Cancer Patient, we haven't really looked into your condition, we're pinning our hopes on ET filling us in via RF instead."
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