[ExI] drexler/sandberg paper

Sun Aug 30 23:30:17 UTC 2020

From: spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com> 

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
<mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> > On Behalf Of BillK via
extropy-chat

>. they might be misleading us (lying) just as much as we lie to them?
BillK

_______________________________________________

>.What?  Whaddya mean lying to them BillK?  Consider that engraved plate
Carl Sagan designed to put aboard Pioneer in 1972:

>.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

>.That plate isn't a lie, that was the truth!  The lie was what we told the
librarian..  What were we boys to do?  Read the articles?...spike

BillK, it occurred to me that all of that might have been the results of our
uptight country.  You lads from across the pond might have a more
open-minded view of such sensitive matters.

I recall clearly when a clear picture of that golden phonograph record was
briefly shown on TV.  No kidding!  ON NATIONAL BROADCAST TV!  I was there.
We were all:

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmarkrathbun.file
s.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2Feyes.jpg%3Fw%3D500%26h%3D375
<https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmarkrathbun.fil
es.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2Feyes.jpg%3Fw%3D500%26h%3D375&f=1&nofb=1>
&f=1&nofb=1

A few weeks later at school, we hipsters were whispering "This month's
issue, page 87, don't get caught."

And there she was in all her refulgent glory.

We were nonchalant and subtle of course, but word got around and we were
soon standing in line for that issue.  The inevitable happened: Miss
Crabapple became suspicious, found the article, took her exacto-knife to it,
spoiled our fun.  G-rated again.

But it was worse than that, for unlike her previous censoring activities,
this photo was embedded in an actual article that was damned interesting,
which we really did wish to read.  The other side of that picture contained
actual text, we wanted to read, and none of us had the intestinal fortitude
to ask if she would at least read the words so we could make sense of the
article.

She had mercifully sliced out only the space-babe, leaving the rest of the
picture, spared as much text as possible.  This left us to wonder why it is
that an odd asymmetry existed.  Why is it that we are here standing in line,
we don't see the girls lining up to check out the nekkid space man?  Why is
that such a one-way thing?  We drew the only reasonable conclusion: girls
have no sex drive.  We already suspected that of course, but we blamed
ourselves (rightfully so (well look at us, mercy.))  But here was a man
baring everything, and we see no indication he is even a geek, but no girls.
So where are they?  (Ironically this restated Fermi's question but with a
slightly different meaning.)

But I digress.  History books often comment that in the 1970 time frame
space was sexy.  Well ja!  We had Vina the Orion girl from The Menagerie
episode of the original Star Trek.  We could totally get past the whole
green skin thing, particularly because we didn't actually know at the time
she had that unfortunate skin tone: we had only black and white TV in those
days, the old hand-crank model, and considered ourselves luck if we had even
that.  So we always referred to Vina as the gray chick from Star Trek.  Gray
skin isn't sexy (but we could totally get past that (didn't seem to bother
Kirk much (granted nothing seemed to bother Kirk much (he was such a
horn-dog (he would mount a Ferengi (if it was closing time at the space
bar.))))) 

About that time, the local rich family got an actual color TV, and he
claimed you didn't even need to get out of your chair to change the channel!
We all knew that had to be a flaming lie, but he started a rumor that Vina
was really green.  We assumed he was lying about that too of course, because
he was the same one who was telling big breezy tales that The Wizard of Oz
was not at all what we had thought either.  

In any case, it was over 15 years later, two years after I was married, that
I acquired my first color TV (which was by that time the only kind a prole
could buy.)  Come to find out, that little twit was telling the truth all
along in all three of his outrageous claims.    

Add that to the Sagan plate, well of course space was sexy, sheesh.

Will and SR, I try to tell young people how it was, and they don't believe
me!  What's a geezer to do?

spike

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20200830/848044ac/attachment-0001.htm>