From: The Low Golden Willow (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 13 1997 - 03:07:20 MDT
} CALYK writes:
} >Crop circles coming from an alien intelligence are obviously trying to tell
} >us something,
"We hate wheat."
"Build more landing pads!"
"THIS PLANET HAS NO PROPER BATHROOMS."
Hmm. Has it occurred to anyone that the aliens don't care about us at
all? They're just using the wheat as a bulletin board to each other.
Or as a graffiti area.
} >I posted on this list how someone believes they are parts to
} >some sort of engine.
If we wave the wheat back and forth very quickly, like cilia, maybe the
Earth can crawl through space!
Or a senile Monolith is trying to teach us about the wheel.
} Danny, whether or not aliens built crop circles is about as interesting
} to me as whether the Mayans or the Incas built some particular burial
} mound, unless the fact dictates a particular course of action.
This is harsh. That aliens caused crop circles would indeed be
interesting. It would teach us not only that there were other people,
but that they were deranged people. This is at least as interesting as
Martian bacteria, the past existence of which also fails to dictate any
particular course of action.
Although I suppose that our cattle would be the ones really de-ranged by
the loss of their feed.
Speaking of aliens, Babylon-5 is back!
It's occurred to me that Banks and Vinge are like Star Trek and
Babylon-5, respectively, but with much more SF imagination. Or that
Banks is a Trek version of Vinge. Or what Trek should have been.
Of course, I had to stay up late to watch it.
-xx- Damien R. Sullivan X-) <*> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix
"I didn't know we could do all this."
"Obviously not. Good grief, man, the Culture's been a spacefaring
species for eleven thousand years; just because you've mostly settled
down in idealized, tailor-made conditions doesn't mean you've lost the
capacity for rapid adaptation. Strength in depth; redudancy;
overdesign. You know the Culture's philosophy." -- _Player of Games_
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