Captains Log Day 200

Sorry, Charlie, you're just a tad too late!

Scientists Offer Plan To Hide Earth From Advanced Space Aliens

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scientists-offer-plan-to-hide-earth-from-advanced-space-aliens_us_56febba1e4b083f5c607a91b?amp%3Bir=WorldPost&utm_hp_ref=world



"Some scientists have expressed concerns that if aliens knew we were here, they might want to come to Earth to plunder our planet’s resources — or worse. Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, for one, has said that an advanced alien civilization might wipe out the human race the way a person might wipe out a colony of ants."

Hmm.  As they say here, "It looks like someone has let the cat out of the bag."

Captains Log Day 120+ Getting to know them.

We have established our observation post in  a sector the locals call New England just West of the population center of Boston.  

I'm sensing some ripple of querulous commentary from the crew who are wondering why we are not locating in a warmer latitude.  I suppose I have been lax about enforcing our  home planet's work and attitude ethic.  When I announced our plan to locate here, one of the crew yelled "Dude, its winter, why can't we locate the ship in Vero Beach?"

I should have just had him punished for his rude questioning of superior's decision, but for reasons I cannot explain I just smiled and explained that this location was where our ship could observe the most intelligent segment of dry land walkers.   We have disguised the ship to look like an abandoned warehouse. Some humans came to investigate at first.  The leader of the group said  "Where the heck did this warehouse come from? It wasn't here yesterday."  We used the nebulizer on them and told them that the warehouse had always been there.  It effectively replaces any contrary memories in the subjects' minds.  No one knows we are here.


  We follow the planetary news on TV.  Great news to report.  One of the recreation facilities in the state  of Florida has announced that it will stop capturing and abusing the beautiful orcas.  

We will be infiltrating the ranks of SeaWorld's corporate board, and soon they will also stop capturing and training Dolphins for the entertainment of bored earth youth.

We are pretty happy about this, because it will extend our stay here at this strange and surprising planet.  

I must comment on the recurrent contest to elect a leader for the country they call America.  Here on Earth many countries actually allow individuals to choose their leader.  In most of the CU, leaders are appointed by the Ruling Committee (RC).  The appointees hold the position until the Committee disapproves of their decisions.  It works quite efficiently.  Why would a population of quasi intelligent entertainment seekers be qualified to pick a leader of anything more complex than a yard sale?      

Apparently, in America, the role of President demands that the prospective candidates engage in petty name calling, photo-shopped tweets depicting unflattering photo's of the opponent's spouse, as well as travel all over the country giving the exact same speech, instead of videotaping the speech and emailing it to everyone.  One candidate sounds a lot like the voice of Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees (a baseball team) on the Seinfeld re-runs.   Oh yes, we watch all the historical documents - TV reruns, sci-fi movies, etc.  This is how we learn about humans.

Captains log Day 60 Entertainment

Lt Col  (*&33%2@

Commander of the Research vessel Fuel Hunter X878

Captain's Log 

We find humans to be a most interesting species.  Our initial expectations were to terminate all life on this planet.  Based on monitoring their TV programs, we believed that the planet supported no intelligent life.  Then, we discovered the existence of intelligent undersea mammals. That new information put the routine extinction on hold.   Now we are suspecting that humans also engage in behavior that demonstrates a sophisticated thought process.   We have been instructed to study the human inhabitants to determine if anything is worth saving. 

Unlike most of the Conquered Universe (CU), most humans behave in unpredictable ways.  There are many examples of this:  

• Instead of everyone wearing a uniform clothing style, which is logical and practical, earthling garb is varied among tribes and often quite distinct and individual even within subgroups.   The chief exception is in the warrior class, where they have adopted the CU standard method of exhibiting class standing and authority (chevrons and medals). But most civilians travel freely in open society with little more to indicate their affiliations than logo-ed tee shirts and hats.     
• A large segment of the population on this planet are employed solely to amuse others.  Since entertainment lacks utilitarian purpose, the trait that seeks amusement has been bred out of intelligent (i.e., logical) species  In most of the CU.   There are no stadiums or fields-of-play or golf courses on other developed worlds. When people are not working they eat and sleep and study.   Our libraries do not have a section for "Fiction." Fiction is illogical. Math, Science and History are the only topics of study. Thus, we find it quite interesting to study human culture and its randomness.
• Humans like to tell "jokes", which are short fictitious stories that illustrate strange behavior or language. An example:  A Buddhist monk walks up to a Hot Dog vendor and says "Make me one with everything."   
• We are learning some of the subtleties of human speech patterns and tone.  For example the difference between literal speech and sarcasm is a matter of inflection.  If a human says, "I am from the government and I am here to help you."  The other human says "Sure you are!" But really means "I don't believe you, you lying son of an unmarried whore."  
• One of the more bizarre "sports" has players punching opposing players who try to sweep a small rubber disk into a goal with a curved stick, while wearing metal rails on their feet, gliding on an oval of ice.  They call it ice hockey.  

I am getting concerned about the work ethic of some of the crew.  Exposure to frittering humans has them asking themselves "Is it so wrong to be amused?"  I overheard one of the engineers telling another, "I was reading a book on Antigravity.  It was so engrossing I could not put it down." The other engineer made a sound suspiciously like a sniggle.

Captains Log Day 55 News Weather and Sports

Lt Col  (*&33%2@

Commander of the Research vessel Fuel Hunter X878

Captain's Log 

Our 1st wave scouts studied all available electronic signals as we explored the solar system.  Approaching this planet, (the 3rd of 15 in this solar system), our main source source of information about the life-forms was gleaned from hacking into primitive orbiting satellites. 

Upon landing and subsequent surveillance, we found ourselves unprepared for the diversity of tribal behavior, dress and cultural complexity that is not explained reflected in their dominant broadcast media, which they call TV.    

The video content of information broadcast is what they call "News, Weather and Sports"  

The inhabitants of Earth have no control over their atmosphere and thus are highly exposed to unexpected weather extremes.  

"Sports" covers a gamut of activities that generally have no practical purpose. They call them "games."  Games range from tossing a ball back and forth on a beach to individual combat to team contests to racing machines to jumping out of aircraft at high altitudes to enjoy the fall. Or, hitting  a small ball into a hole in the grass.

News.  "You heard it here first!" they keep saying.  What the frell is so great about being the first one to report a half story.  What's the frelling hurry? why not get the facts and report something useful instead of wasting people's time?  The so-called News is about three things:

• Disasters 
• Things to be afraid of 
• Entertainers

  Apparently, many citizens tune-in to a favorite station regularly every day to see video of other people being bad to each other and to animals.  The vast majority of news content is about disasters.  Train crashes, fires, robberies, murders, floods, storms, earthquakes, wars.   Every segment includes the many dangers that humans encounter in everyday life: poisoned water, exploding gas mains, new diseases, escaped maniacs, terror plots.

 It is unclear why there are so many separate stations broadcasting in the same language.  The content is generally the same mix of disasters and things to be afraid of.  There is a lot of interest in what famous people are doing and who they are doing it to/with.  Then there are a lot of shows with 4 or 5 people all talking as if they knew more than the viewers.  It is not clear why people watch these shows.

As I have said, humans are peculiar.  It's hard to find meaning in their behavior from a logical standpoint.

Getting Settled

Lt Col  (*&33%2@
Commander of the Research vessel Fuel Hunter X878

Captains Log Day 45:

Assuming homo sapien form is somewhat more complicated than initially thought. Our natural smaller bodies are more efficient than humans.  
Although homo sapiens appear to all look identical (much like colony lifeforms such as  insects and fish)  from a distance, we have found an amazing and unexplained diversity of appearance of individual members of this species, when viewed up close.  

Development of human anatomy has been primitive.  Their sexual organs are located in difficult to reach places, and their (ahem) excretory orifices perform double duty as pleasure centers.  Some of the crew find this mildly erotic, especially fond of females with large breasts.  Since most of the population of our galaxy reproduce by cloning, we no longer have a birth cycle, and everyone is slim with flat chests.   

WTF? One of the crew remembered the pictures on a piece of space junk that we encountered on one of our early journeys  beyond the outer solar system.  It had no active electronic signals in or out. The dead hunk of metal pod had a plaque on the side of it.  It looked like this:

 

The First Mate suggested  that it was supposed to be some form of blueprint.  Or primitive hieroglyphs? 
We were all scratching our Gelads  over it.   We couldn't figure it out what it meant. In the end, we just vaporized the frelling thing, since it seemed to have no practical use.

Oops.  The Wiki* says that the space probe was called Pioneer 10 and plaque came from Earth and was intended to explain things to aliens, like us, I guess.  Well that's one puzzle solved. 

Funny, though, the humans in the drawing don't wear uniforms or carry weapons as do most humans we have encountered.


*All knowledge about the planet is collected into an application called Wikipedia.  I call it Wiki for short.

Commander's Log - day 31

Lt Col  (*&33%2@
Commander of the Research vessel Fuel Hunter X878

Notes:

We have been on this planet for 30 or so revolutions and have already found much about the dominant species here that is both  interesting and annoying.   Earthlings have developed fairly advanced fabrications and construction techniques, and yet they are primitive in the way different tribes interact with each other.

We wander among them unnoticed.  We have learned that the most invisible disguise is to shape as what they call "homeless." [Note: Unlike our planet, where we are assigned to clean and warm dwellings by lottery, humans are expected to build their own home, or pay money to live in an existing building.

The First Mate Gathering Info

Yes, I know this is silly, but hey, don't shoot the messenger, I am only reporting the facts.  Apparently, although most individuals posses  relative wealth, the luckiest individuals, to whom much has simply fallen into their hands, believe that they are entitled to a larger share of the wealth.

Humans who have misfortune, mental illness or addictions  are forced to wander the streets panhandling or stealing to get money they need to eat.  Some kill others during robberies.  Homeless humans not prohibited from walking around asking strangers for money, which serves both our purposes of observation and our need to get samples of earth money.  A bonus is that no one looks too closely at them.  Double bonus, we have been able to get some local money from passersby, which we have been able to counterfeit in our 11-D printer.  Thus we haven't needed to kill anyone, yet. ]


Early wave scouts have been investigating "Music" for our report to home base.  This is the only planet we have encountered where the creatures employ sound as a form of entertainment.  Other lifeforms have developed audible speech or screeches or howls but most sound is always purposeful.  No species has developed anything more sophisticated than something rhythmic, resembling what earthlings call a "fart sound".

But here we are gobsmacked to hear tones of exquisite beauty and harmony.  These are all words I have learned this week from accessing Wikipedia, which we think is the repository of all knowledge to humans..  ("Gob-smacked" is a word that one island tribe uses to describe the state of being so surprised that one is speechless.)  

So we have found that there is something universal in humans that wants to make, and listen to  music.  This is not evident in other species or life forms.  A human child left alone in a room might pick up a stick or a spoon and start banging it rhythmically.  Where else do you find that type of behavior?

Some of the crew have become very interested in the sheer variety and richness of musical platforms, instruments and report a very pleasing effect on mental processes.  We have set-up audio equipment and are monitoring radio signals as well as obtaining stored data disks of which there are billions in use here.  Some of the crew has become quite fond of what is called classical music, and others have voiced preference for songs that tell a story, called folk or country music.  No one likes Opera or Rap.


More to follow....
---------------------------------------------------------

First Pass

Message To Base:

Success! After traveling half way across the universe we have finally found a planet meandering around a dim star that has an atmosphere of agreeable temperatures and useful gasses.  The surface is 70% seawater, which is precisely what we have been searching for. 

Lets take this one

 This planet's ocean can provide high grade fuel for our Hydrogen-Oxygen extractors and enough fuel to power the grid for 200 years.   
We have monitored electronic communication signals from our ship but found few signs of intelligent life.   

The dry surface is populated by an abundance of flora and fauna. The dominant species call themselves homo sapiens.  While they have developed some primitive technology, they are essentially nasty brutish and short bipeds who use speech mainly to argue with one another.  According to the video programs that we have monitored. They are combative, greedy and easily fooled.  

Perhaps the only redeeming characteristic is that they have developed noise making to a strange and sophisticated level - one might even regard it as art.  They call the noise "music."  

Our sonar probes have identified several undersea species of advanced culture - eg, whales and dolphins. Their intra-species communication method is extremely sophisticated and elegant, requiring no external transmitters or receivers. They have developed a near Utopian society, devoid of greed and war.  Since they never developed weapons, they are at the mercy of the less intelligent homo sapiens who use rudimentary devices to kill for trophy, not food.  Thus, the population of these species is diminishing rapidly and they will be extinct before the planet circles its star another 20 times. 

I assume that we shall follow Protocol 16:  Terminate all life, activate the tractor beam, hook-up the planet and tow it back via the wormhole for use as fuel.   Please confirm.

Lt Col  (*&33%2@
Commander of the Research vessel Fuel Hunter X878


Message From Base:
 To: Commander (*&33%2@
 Subject: Protocol 16

  You are advised of change in plan.  Do not repeat do not invoke Protocol 16 at this time. The Council has voted to suspend the retrieval mission for this planet mainly due to the existence of highly intelligent undersea species. 

You are instructed to establish a secret base on the dry land surface and investigate possibility of other salvageable life forms.

Also, what is this "music?"  

Do not engage inhabitants openly.  Your presence must remain secret.  Assume planet appropriate shape-shifting apparel. 

Await further instructions.

Council President 00(&(-+))