Whitechapel - UN Appointee for First Contact Thu, 23 May 2013 12:13:05 -0700 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/ Lussumo Vanilla 1.1.4 & Feed Publisher UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262082#Comment_262082 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262082#Comment_262082 Sat, 25 Sep 2010 19:57:25 -0700 Casey Moore From here:

The United Nations was set today to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earth?s first contact for any aliens that may come visiting.

Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN's little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), is to describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society’s Kavli conference centre in Buckinghamshire.

She is scheduled to tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection of extraterrestrial life more likely than ever before - and that means the UN must be ready to coordinate humanity’s response to any “first contact”.
]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262158#Comment_262158 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262158#Comment_262158 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 07:39:26 -0700 256
In fact, I might just start putting that on business cards now and see what happens.

UNOOSA - Whitechapel Branch
]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262160#Comment_262160 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262160#Comment_262160 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 08:03:58 -0700 looneynerd UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262163#Comment_262163 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262163#Comment_262163 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 08:22:56 -0700 government spy
Develop a very simplistic protocol that anyone can follow, because the first one there will be immediately developing a rapport, and once there's a first contact established, we don't need some person in a suit showing up and kicking the only person aliens know out of the way, interrupting the discourse, and saying, "No, no, talk to THIS person."

Basically we need a template that is very simplistic and easy to understand, to hold the fort until the suits can show up and back up the original person who's made contact.

(I kind of liked that pamphlet looking cartoon that was made by the same guys who made "in case you travel through time.") ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262172#Comment_262172 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262172#Comment_262172 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 09:39:37 -0700 256
Send 'Em And See broadcasts, of which there are a few extant examples - mainly the Pioneer plates, the Voyager record, and the Arecebo message - and I don't think any of them are great. These are really Pre-First Contact - you're just throwing them out there in case anyone's there. The physical objects are pleasant symbolic items, but they're incredibly unlikely to ever come in contact with anything ever again. The Arecebo message is worth looking at - clearly a lot of work went into writing it, but it's mind-bogglingly difficult to read even if you're from Earth and familiar with a lot of the subject matter.

Distant Discovery: This is the most likely form of the we-are-not-alone, to my mind. We'd discover some sign of life on an exoplanet some light-years distant, indicated either from signals that they've aimed at us, or by detection of some sort of megastructure engineering (I saw something recently in the science news about designing next-gen space telescopes that might be able to see light flashing off exoplanetary oceans - it seems like the resolution is only a few leaps away). Then you have a target to start sending information to. This is a staggeringly difficult task - somehow you have to reduce your message (whatever it is) to a string of bits (?) that can be decoded with no assumptions. How do you communicate, inside a stream of information, how that information should be formatted? How to communicate that a certain portion of the dataflow represents a character? How do you introduce someone to the idea of discrete characters, or images?

Here They Come: Contact, the old fashioned way, with aliens/craft within the solar system or even on earth. Very unlikely unless some sort of FTL transport exists. But potentially a lot easier than the situation above: This way, you can get some idea of who you're talking to, how they might look at the universe (ie by comparative anatomy), and also to get a back-and-forth-dialog going.

It's a fascinating subject - I'd be interested to see what WC thinks about it. ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262178#Comment_262178 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262178#Comment_262178 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 10:11:37 -0700 James Puckett UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262189#Comment_262189 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262189#Comment_262189 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 10:53:37 -0700 Casey Moore UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262201#Comment_262201 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262201#Comment_262201 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 12:22:50 -0700 warrenellis UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262213#Comment_262213 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262213#Comment_262213 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 13:36:37 -0700 Casey Moore
And someone needs to get this group a cool logo and a store with some merchandise immediately. ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262218#Comment_262218 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262218#Comment_262218 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 14:09:12 -0700 bjacques "Invisible Thread". That is all. ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262264#Comment_262264 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262264#Comment_262264 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 18:53:06 -0700 atavistian this process. Somewhere in DC or Virginia there is a group of lawyers crowded around a table drafting reasons why US National Security trumps UN protocol regarding when, how and in what order to talk to little green men. ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262323#Comment_262323 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262323#Comment_262323 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 07:03:26 -0700 Val A Lindsay II I can't believe I didn't get this job.

Probably something to do with the eels... ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262325#Comment_262325 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262325#Comment_262325 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 07:19:14 -0700 3millionyears Probably something to do with the eels.

Will they interfere with the probes? ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262352#Comment_262352 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262352#Comment_262352 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 10:11:20 -0700 Paladine
Nevermind, carry on. ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262358#Comment_262358 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262358#Comment_262358 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 10:35:22 -0700 Val A Lindsay II
Dude, the eels are probes! Ellis Probes! The aliens aren't only waiting for us to get our shit together. They want to make sure they're up to snuff before showing themselves... ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262367#Comment_262367 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262367#Comment_262367 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:15:38 -0700 256
The Guardian confirms that the entire thing seems to be a hoax or mistake, including a quote from Othman herself:
It sounds really cool but I have to deny it


Still, it's an interesting subject. What DO you say on the world's most important first date? ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262374#Comment_262374 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262374#Comment_262374 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:32:40 -0700 Casey Moore UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262377#Comment_262377 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262377#Comment_262377 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:39:06 -0700 Oddcult What DO you say on the world's most important first date?

"Right, so we keep this quiet and gradually get people used to the idea over a few decades or so, yeah? Microscopic evidence of microbes first, then exoplanets, then simple mathematical messages based on Pi or something before televisual contact and a show-managed meeting somewhere out beyond Saturn? Okay, good plan. I think that's sorted then. Oh, but you want everyone in the Southern states of the US available for plausibly deniable happy anal fun times? Ah, go on then, they all fuck their livestock and no one will believe them anyway." ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262389#Comment_262389 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262389#Comment_262389 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 12:34:45 -0700 Casey Moore UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262464#Comment_262464 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262464#Comment_262464 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 23:50:53 -0700 Cat Vincent Here's IO9 on the subject. Their jovial stance is a long way from the shrieking on a lot of the UFO blogs, but they manage to conflate the original article in just the same way. Time will tell... or, more likely, won't. ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262471#Comment_262471 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262471#Comment_262471 Tue, 28 Sep 2010 03:22:06 -0700 Oddcult 'der gubmint is hidin summat reeeeeeeeally big' doesn't seem to come up in quite the same way when it's a Republican.

However, I think it's likely that if there ever had been contact, my above facetious comment isn't unlikely. A quarantine period of decades, if not hundreds of years, is probably mutually advisable. Even if it is all true, and there have been slips, I don't think we'll be getting 'disclosure' anytime soon. People are just too stupid to deal with it.

Also - in the cosmic sceme of things, are nukes really that big a deal? It's not like we could send them through interstellar space to any kind of target. ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262476#Comment_262476 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262476#Comment_262476 Tue, 28 Sep 2010 04:58:58 -0700 Ben Klumaster UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262479#Comment_262479 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262479#Comment_262479 Tue, 28 Sep 2010 05:17:25 -0700 Oddcult UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262488#Comment_262488 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262488#Comment_262488 Tue, 28 Sep 2010 06:52:07 -0700 Verissimus
Of course a more likely explanation for why there hasn't been any real contact yet would be that there ain't no damn aliens, at least not anywhere near Earth... ]]> UN Appointee for First Contact http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262800#Comment_262800 http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=8976&Focus=262800#Comment_262800 Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:09:30 -0700 256 Gliese 581g would fit about as well as the first two did. ]]>