First contact!

You’re the first to meet an intelligent alien species. What are you going to do? Here’s a brief, handy guide — I’ll just excerpt a few points.

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I like this idea: there’s no way we’re going to war with them. Our technologies will not be comparable, and we have to note the obvious: they’d be the ones with interstellar space flight, not us. So, yes, it will be a case of nuclear weapons vs. sponges, and we’d better be careful.

But there is one important matter to consider about the comparison. If you found a sponge on a beach crowded with sponges, how much remorse would you feel if you took a sample? You don’t want to be the first contactee. Or the second. Or any of them. This is going to be a personally dangerous event. Your best bet is to run away rather than try to chat.

There are several more suggestions for how to communicate, and it ends with this example.

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Now if we’ve gotten this far, we’re going to have to assume that the aliens do see us as something more than sponges. If we’re close to them technologically, then yes, it’s worth your while to show off your awareness of your place in the universe. If we’re not close, then face it — the aliens won’t care how much knowledge of our species’ history we have. They’re going to be sizing us up for edibility, or suitability for mindless labor, or whether we’d be useful scrubbing implements in the shower, none of which require any philosophical or scientific capabiity at all.

It’s an interesting thought exercise, but only if we meet an alien species that isn’t too far beyond us intellectually.

Metal Darwin

There may be a few metal fans here and there…and this song is for you. If you don’t enjoy music with lots of hoarse shouting and banging instruments into rocks, DO NOT PLAY THIS VIDEO. You will cry. I’ve got two sons, so I’ve been inured to this stuff — and at least this band, The Ocean, has intelligent lyrics.

Oh, you say, you couldn’t hear the lyrics? Neither could I, because my ears were bleeding (but that’s one of the desired effects of this genre, don’t let it bother you). I had to look them up on the internet.

The Origin of Species

Yes, it’s quite hard to believe
That we all come from the same seed:
The scrub, the cockroach and the human being
It’s hard to see how the perfection of complex organs was achieved without an engineer

But all you see is the human eye
On top of the mountain peak, so high
A steep wall of rock
Impossible to climb
Our imagination is left behind

But there is a gentle slope on the backside
And even worms have simple eyes
That help them distinguish darkness from light

Our brains are accustomed to the scope of a lifetime
We will never be able to see how the sluggish vessel of evolution
Is slowly creeping up the hill
Uphill

There’s no other solution
There’s no other solution
There’s no alternative to the theory of evolution

Now excuse me, I need to get a bag of ice for my head and to load a few of this band’s songs into my iPod.

Malta mustn’t offend the Pope!

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The mayor of Malta is quite anxious to have a statue removed from a prominent place on the road from the airport, before the Pope arrives. He might be embarrassed, after all. That’s the statue on the right; it’s called “Colonna Mediterranea”, and some people fear an obelisk is too phallic. Because, like everyone, when I see a giant green monument with multi-colored patches and a series of constrictions in it, I think of my penis.

The mayor shouldn’t worry. The Pope and the Catholic Church have no shame.The statue might serve a useful purpose in reminding the Catholic entourage to get their VD shots, while also intimidated them into keeping theirs in their pants. Or frocks. Or whatever they’re wearing. And rather than worrying about offending the Pope, shouldn’t he be more concerned about the offense to Malta?

Malta has its own history of priestly pedophilia, and has received complaints about 45 priests, which is rather impressive for such a small place…but the church claims that almost half of those accusations are groundless. I think they should be more optimistic, and phrase that as over half the accusations are not groundless. Either way, the Catholic church has been waving its erections around Malta for many years, the Pope should be able to cope with one more comparatively harmless one near the airport road. It’s the one that hasn’t raped any children.

I’ve been reminded that there is an even bigger phallic symbol erected in St Peter’s Square, right where the Pope can see it and touch it any time he wants.

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Maybe Malta should feel a little inadequate and think about putting up more and bigger columns, instead.

Crazies…on twitter? Say it ain’t so!

I’ve been getting a few odd, cryptic messages on twitter from someone calling himself @spiritualgenome. I looked him up to figure out what the heck he was babbling about, and found his web page. Turns out he’s a crop circle nut, and you might find a few minutes amusement in his delusions.

Fascinating new discoveries by Russian molecular biologists have revealed that DNA has a mysterious resonance that has been termed the Phantom-DNA Effect. In addition these Russian researchers have found that DNA reacts to voice activated laser light when it is set at the specific frequency of the DNA itself. Using these methods it is possible not only to change the information patterns in the DNA, but it is also possible to communicate with the DNA.

This “phantom DNA” effect is all over the web, surprisingly: people claim that if you shine a laser through a solution of DNA, it scatters or resonates in some particular pattern that persists even after you remove the DNA. Guess what? While it’s a very popular subject on fringe websites hosted on cheap servers with crappy web design, it seems to be completely absent from the scientific literature.

Huh. Who would have guessed?

You might be wondering what it has to to do with crop circles. All will be explained in the following paragraph.

It seems that there is a divine intelligence in the DNA that is capable of resonating with the natural frequency of the earth in order to create crop circles. This divine intelligence is what the Hindus refer to as the Inner Self, and there are indications that the increase in crop circle activity in recent decades is set to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar, at which point this divine intelligence in the DNA will become generally known to the world, thus ushering in a new era in 2012.

Ooooo-OOoOO-ooooh. Magic DNA, lasers, quantum physics, psychic powers, vibrations, crop circles, mystical Mayan calendars, and 2012 — it’s got everything. Total lunatic meltdown.

I just thought somebody who would throw together something this insane deserved a brief flurry of attention to his wacky webpage before I blocked him.

Maybe Australians have particularly vigorous church services?

It seems that it might be safer to attend an Australian strip show than to go to church.

The latest data, compiled by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, showed 1600 people were charged with committing a range of 27 offences in the state’s “places of worship” in 2008.

Surprisingly, the figures showed only 282 people were charged in premises classified as adult entertainment over the same offences.

Except — and I do hate to ruin a funny story — the newspaper article says nothing about the number of premises involved. I suspect that there may be many more churches than strip clubs, which would mean that per venue, churches would be safer.

If that latter assumption is not true, though, let me know — it would mean Australia is actually Flying Spaghetti Monster paradise.

Godless dolls

Jen, in response to someone making a line of clerical Barbie dolls, has created her own contribution: Atheist Barbie. She’s kickin’.

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I like her…although if word gets out that pants are not part of the atheist outfit, we’re going to have a surge of male membership and all the women will stay home. The pants are optional, OK?

Now, though, we’re missing someone important: where’s Gaytheist Ken?

And don’t get me started on G.I. Joe. They were always just a little too butch.

Get on the job, Mattel! I want these by Christmas!