Tag: earth

Awesome art by Nick Risinger - Blue Bot by Adam Grossman ;)

Are we the noisiest planet in the neighborhood or what?!

This could make you rethink your estimate of proportion. Apparently, (at this time) we’ve been transmitting our whereabouts to every alien within one hundred light years…

Awesome art by Nick Risinger - Blue Dot by Adam Grossman ;)

I read this short article on something fairly interesting (HERE)…apparently our earthly radio transmissions are are now reaching places very very very very far away.

A thought crossed my mind about this. Any society as advanced as us or more so will almost certainly either be receptive to radio waves…but here’s the problem: Exactly how receptive?

I would like to point out that while we can attribute radiation for a significant amount of our evolution, we can also attribute the scarcity of life outside our planet to it…it is the double edged sword that makes earth so rare. There isn’t just life here…theres a TON of it.

SO now that we know that the number of planets capable of supporting life is waaaaaaaay higher than we guessed1, we really need to entertain the idea that we’re not alone, because to ignore every possible indicator that it’s true would really put us in a scary and indefensible position.

We assume also that other intelligent species wouldn’t sweat us blasting everything within 100 light years with lots and lots of noise. I mean, in our quest to make sure we’re not alone…what are we prepared for when they finally do show up and surprisingly expect our society to be a derivative of the Lucile Ball Show2

The bigger problem is the assumption that the signal would actually be received as a communication…what if it is considered noise…or worse…interference? My point is that we are making a whoooole lot of assumptions and firing off a whole lot of EMR into space under the premise of scientific space exploration that we wouldn’t dare point at ourselves because it would fry us faster than a man-sized microwave oven.

On the big scheme of things, we’re like galactic infants, all we want to do eat, shit, and scream our guts out. We can’t see very well, we barely know what to make of everything we do know, we’re only marginally communicative on a mathematical scale, and all we know to do is grow, eat more, shit more, and scream more. I think we give ourselves far too much credit, and the one thing we can expect is for who-or-what-ever we encounter will very likely have an agenda similar to that of a scolding, fed-up, and irritable parent….because we’ve been flooding the neighborhood with nothing but the crap from the entertainment industry for decades.

The only species we’re likely to encounter right now will either be far more advanced at least technologically3 or would be equipped for a one way trip to settle here, thus immediately causing 7 billion humans to go into fight or flight mode thanks to Hollywood giving us all the wrong information we could ever want in order to prepare. Do you see a happy ending here? I don’t.

On the cosmic scale, we now know very clearly that we’re incredibly lucky to be alive at all, that we’re constantly surrounded by deadly factors completely outside our scope of control, and that we’re facing the limits of our own sustainability through very rose tinted glasses.

…and yet here we go…inviting yet another factor that our own observations and indicators of self-preservation should be screaming at us not to do.

I just can’t help but think…if the Milky Way was our neighborhood, the earth would be that house in the neighborhood that everyone hates for being loud, noisy, messy, and completely oblivious to the people around us that might not be so cool about the noise pollution.

I am sooooo not saying we should all be prepared for the next alien invasion. I am just saying that maybe, just maaaaaybe…pointing all those radio transmitters out there to communicate who, what, where, and when we are might easily be construed as that godawful neighbor that feels the need to run a speaker out onto his front porch and share his taste in music with everyone on the block.

Okay…rant over…have a great night.

-T

Show 3 footnotes

  1. Check out this awesome database and see how many have already been found: CLICK HERE.
  2. *SMH* …Look up I love Lucy HERE
  3. They’d would have to have the tech to reach us, which at this time means they probably are able to travel at least 30+light years in a single generation. Which means they would have been planning to meet us in some capacity for decades and very likely have FTL capabilities. Any society that has FTL would technologically ROFLSTOMP a society that didn’t have it. Why am I making a gaming reference? Because the only adequate allusion to our ability to defend against tech like that is like trying to defend against a Zerg rush when all you have is tech from SimCity.



Good people…

Sometimes I really love where I live…I mean geographically of course.

Okay I love it a LOT of the time.

I almost didn’t write about it because it wasn’t earth-shattering ranting news I usually gravitate to when writing.

I have been moving, and it’s been slow because I’ve been moving in multiple directions and maintaining the business at the same time has been a little chaotic.

Anyhow, while I was running errands yesterday, the car in front of me had turned their hazard lights on and the guy driving had jumped out to push his car because it was in a bad spot and would have caused a bit of a jam.

Now, I like top help people as a practice. Some people don’t, but I consider it almost a moral obligation to help where situations present themselves. I don’t really slant others for not feeling the same way, but my sense of priorities doesn’t tell me I cant help someone out because I might miss a hockey game or miss a meal. My hopes are that I can only lead by example and that someday everyone feels that same sense of obligation I do in cases like this.

I’m not mental about it, but I can hope, ya know?

So I pull into the parking lot nearby and run over to help the guy (who is now having a very hard time trying to push his truck up an incline to get it out of traffic. I ask if he minds if I help him out, and of course he’s appreciative. I am not really paying attention to anything except moving a truck up this incline because it’s not a small truck and it’s not a small incline…but the truck IS moving and we don’t have too far to go.

Within like 30 seconds, two more people park their cars next to mine, run over next to me and start helping push…at which point the truck is no longer very hard to push and we get it safely out into the parking lot. I don’t know why, but immediately afterward I asked if everyone there was from The Colony…sure enough, everyone was local. I kind of grin and state to no one in particular how much I love this area, check with the driver of the down truck to see if he needs a ride or more help and he declines but thanks me for offering (he had already called for a can of gas…he was out).

Now, I’ve done this sort of thing a lot, I mean so many times I couldn’t count. The reason this event stood out for me so much was that two other people pulled over to help! Honestly, that doesnt happen. People are honestly just too preoccupied with whatever they’re doing normally. But here, I wasn’t the only guy getting out to help push.

I just think thats one of the coolest things. I like it here. πŸ˜‰




Foreign Cars…

I just read an article about how Ford and some other motor company were joining forces in revitalizing some factory…in Thailand.

The article itself isn’t the focus, but the chain of thought it inspired is.

Why on earth is our government allowing foreign business to leech money out of our country? Is Ford no longer American based?
(I honestly don’t know…I am asking)

In our desire for anything that makes us different, I feel like we have sort of sacrificed some of this country’s financial foundation by allowing foreign business and industry to prosper more than our own. That is beyond free trade…it’s actually harmful to the US business model. We are our biggest consumer, right? Bueller?

I mean, the same argument can be dished out for a number of different industries, but it comes down to people trying to maximize income by any means necessary rather than have a few standards regarding WHO ultimately gets sacrificed for these profits?

I know I am being vague…it’s on purpose. It’s honestly getting late and I haven’t researched enough to lay out and prove my point…doesn’t make it any less true. Just less acceptable.

But then again, I suppose that’s how we like bad news eh?

By the way, totally unrelated. My roommate’s young son, after getting tucked in, made his dad come over and give me a hug goodnight because he forgot. πŸ˜‰ I know…unrelated.

But I started off griping about foreign cars and now you’re warm and fuzzy anyways right?

…so my job here is done. πŸ™‚

Goodnight World…this is me hugging you all goodnight!

-T