Bush! Klaatu barada nikto—
It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet. But if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple. Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We will be waiting for your answer.
Which, to be fair, risks being misread, or rather read as a mirror image of my own reading; after all, in some imaginations, it’s Bush standing at the head of the flying saucer’s ramp, having been shot in the back by paranoid, squabbling (former) allies, delivering his cinder speech to Saddam Hussein—whose present course they fancy threatens to extend his violence. (The persistent lack of any option to join us and live in peace in Bush’s various ultimata rather militates against this reading—but the risk, nonetheless, is there.) Still! The first thing I thought when I read this—
Berkeley – After more than a million years of computation by more than 4 million computers worldwide, the SETI@home screensaver that crunches data in search of intelligent signals from space has produced a list of candidate radio sources that deserve a second look.
Three members of the SETI@home team will head to Puerto Rico this month to point the Arecibo radio telescope at up to 150 spots identified as the source of possible signals from intelligent civilizations.
—the first thing I could think to do was run outside and find a really tall hill and start yelling as loud as I could: “Help! Help! You frickin’ Galactic-Federation-formin’ Ashtar-Command-runnin’ Fermi’s-Paradox-duckin’ motherfuckers, get your butts down here and do something!”
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So long as they don't make me wear black jumpsuits with matching sneakers, they're welcome to visit.
Will there be enough time to set up a guest bedroom?
Coincidentally: http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/2003/03/08/