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WTF? A serious news story about 50-foot tall humans on a planet??

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TaoPhoenix:
 It's really not that funny of a joke, real dry humor IMO.  It has always bothered me that we have massive radio telescopes (SETI), that for years has sent out messages into the cosmos telling any possible life-forms where we are in the universe with hopes they would send messages back.  The U.S. gov't stopped funding SETI in 1995, and now it's still being run with civilian grants and funds.
  So why does it bother me?  What makes us think that any intelligent lifeforms out there somewhere are friendly?  If they are advanced enough to speed of light travel, we would most likely be like ants for them to study and/or conquer.  Yeah, just like the series Falling Skies.  We have a plethora of resources here that would make for a nice pit-stop for any conquering entities looking to expand into the cosmos.  Hell, we may even be a food source ourselves!
-Tinman57 (June 13, 2013, 05:17 PM)
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Hmm, I'd put it 50-50 that super aliens are "nice". The basic theory is that aggression isn't sustainable etc etc. I'd put it more likely that we'd be considered "cute pets" or maybe an anthropology lab world. But more basically the timeline is just so tight - I'm not at all certain we'll still be "this race" 500 years from now. We could end up in a resource scarce dystopia not from WWIII, but just really maxxing out the "easy resources" and then when a glass of water is $12, a big bad epidemic of Bird Flu Six will spiral us down into the dark ages again via brain drain by losing 500 million people in a too-specialized world. So then when the aliens get here, we'd be back in twilight again.

Tinman57:
Hmm, I'd put it 50-50 that super aliens are "nice". The basic theory is that aggression isn't sustainable etc etc. I'd put it more likely that we'd be considered "cute pets" or maybe an anthropology lab world. But more basically the timeline is just so tight - I'm not at all certain we'll still be "this race" 500 years from now. We could end up in a resource scarce dystopia not from WWIII, but just really maxxing out the "easy resources" and then when a glass of water is $12, a big bad epidemic of Bird Flu Six will spiral us down into the dark ages again via brain drain by losing 500 million people in a too-specialized world. So then when the aliens get here, we'd be back in twilight again. -TaoPhoenix (June 13, 2013, 07:17 PM)
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  Hmmmm, I'll have some of what he's having....   :P  I think your right about the resources, but one thing you omitted was the population of the earth eating up all the resources.  Geeze, we're already past 12 BILLION people when the earth can only safely support 2 billion, or so the scientist say....

TaoPhoenix:
 It's really not that funny of a joke, real dry humor IMO.  
-Tinman57 (June 13, 2013, 05:17 PM)
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Well, it's quite funny if you take it at the original source of Weekly World News. I was then wondering why it ended up in the Guardian - am I missing something or is that a grade B but "real" paper?

Meanwhile, has no one else noticed that Moore's Law never seemed to hit the Space Age? The calculations should be cake by now. Shouldn't the manufacturing have gotten cheaper too?

Or did we get lucky exactly once to barely squeak through the edge of impossible through a bit of national delusion obscuring how dangerous it really was?

Instead, in a way, notice how "cheap" modern tech is. All this modern War on Terror junk is really kinda cheap, just guys sitting at computers listening to / reading our online chatter, but it's all modular - let's say $50k and poof, you have another analyst at work on it for a year. Whereas the costs to do the next stage of space flight, which is a Moonbase, are colossal, and in our current penny pinch pound foolish mode, we're squeezing ourselves out of the window to make it happen. I'd say it would take 100 years to do right, because that takes SERIOUS infrastructure to make it legit, not a 1 shot publicity stunt.

And if you think we're having fun hunting "terrorists" NOW, just wait when you risk blowing out the entire air reserves with a $100 bomb.
 :'(

tsaint:
It has always bothered me that we have massive radio telescopes (SETI), that for years has sent out messages into the cosmos
-Tinman57 (June 13, 2013, 05:17 PM)
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I was under the impression that radio telescopes received rather than emitted and that the SETI  program searched for signals

4wd:
What makes us think that any intelligent lifeforms out there somewhere are friendly?-Tinman57 (June 13, 2013, 05:17 PM)
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I always did enjoy the Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Manw.

 ;D

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