Earlier this month CNN.com reported about a collision between a Chinese submarine and an underwater sonar array being towed by the American destroyer USS John McCain. In the report, “ a U.S. military official calls it an ‘inadvertent encounter’… The array was damaged, but the sub and the ship did not collide… the (US) Navy does not believe this was a deliberate incident of Chinese harassment, as it would have been extremely dangerous had the array gotten caught in the submarine’s propellers.”
However, OpEd News writer Brock Novak argues that, based on analysis comparing the incident to an earlier capture of a US Navy P-3 anti-submarine warfare plane, this incident could be viewed as nothing but intentional:
The extraordinary real impact and jeopardization of national security of the P3 episode was masked by the media hoopla of simply getting the plane back, after the Chinese spent weeks “de-engineering” all its sensitive technology and secured the technical know-how they wanted. That is, the proverbial horse was already out of the barn when the plane parts were ultimately returned to the U.S.. The U.S. would get this towed array back too but only after it was thoroughly analyzed and de-engineered by Chinese defense and technology scientists. In relation to the P3 technology compromise incident, a huge parallel exists here with this new incident, disturbingly (and wrongly) being downplayed as a simple “inadvertent encounter”.
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Earlier today, news broke about the death of Farrah Fawcett, a highly anticipated event as media coverage had continued to reveal to the public over the last several months that her health had been deteriorating at an alarming rate. Then, shortly after 3:15 PM today, most major media sources had begun shifting their attention to what has perhaps become the biggest celebrity-death shocker this year; the passing of pop singer and cultural icon Michael Jackson. Jackson was 50 years old.
As I read the news on my Blackberry forty five minutes later, I grimly thought to myself of the old adage, “things happen in threes”. Could this end up being the case today? Now, our worst fears may be confirmed as synchronicity threatens to strike yet again… indeed, details are slowly emerging regarding what may be the death of a third celebrity; a shocking conclusion to today’s unsettling round-up.
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Most folks are familiar with S.E.T.I. (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), and when discussing it myself, one of my very favorite examples to give is perhaps the most famous imagery associated with it; large arrays of radio transmitters and satellite dishes. However, fewer people realize that, much like a regular conversation, communication with possible extraterrestrials can go two ways, also.
Active SETI (also known as METI, or “Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence”) consists of the act of sending signals into space, with the intention of aliens receiving them. But is this practice dangerous?
Stephen Hawking, in his book A Brief History of Time, suggests that “alerting” extraterrestrial intelligences of our existence is not only dangerous, but that it’s also foolhardy. Apparently, according to Hawking, mankind’s history of how we treat other cultures less technologically proficient than us provides the best comparison. He bluntly suggests that we “lay low”. After all, even if aliens weren’t hostile and trying to kill us, they may very well occupy Earth, and pluck us like beets from the ground to be chartered in a anti-graviton wagon to the nearest (at least semi) habitable mudball; a “reservation” of sorts, where we humans can live as we please. So sadly, this sounds so familiar. Perhaps we learn things from history after all…
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Greetings Graliens,
For those of you who haven’t seen already, I’ve added a Twitter button to the sidebar next to this post (that’s right, lovingly allow those precious peepers to drift slightly to the right… see it? Very good). Now you can have links and updates about The Gralien Report, as well as a variety of other neat facets of my research, sent directly to your mobile device. Cool, huh?
Technology is great… ciao!
-Micah A. Hanks
