Comments | scooterbird: On this day in Galactic Command history

scooterbird

On this day in Galactic Command history

Nov 26, 2007 15:13

Exactly thirty years ago today, the Earth, through Southern Television in the UK, received a message from Vrillon of Ashtar Galactic Command.

(Concerning the message itself, efbq spoke my mind: a nice try. A damned good try.)

ETA: Astonishingly, I allowed a similar and perhaps more significant anniversary to float by without realizing it due to it ( Read more... )

general weirdness, history

Comments 3

thecanuckguy November 26 2007, 23:03:05 UTC

Damned good try at pirating legitimate airwaves (which is the part that fascinates me) but that aliens speak English? Other than that part, yes, very convincing. I definitely call it a "War of the Worlds" for the 20th century (erm, wait ... )

(And, as to the "speaking English" bit, I just realized I've forgotten Rule #1 of Everything: "Never, *ever* underestimate people's stupidity" Just cleaned up some a "well-meaning" email today sent to my wife from one of her friends, the Applebee's chain email. She gets a disproportionate amount of these things, forwarded to her by her otherwise well-educated and generally smart friends, who, for some reason, lose all their brain-cells whenever the Internet is involved. (My wife has gotten to the point where I check her email a lot more than she does and, before she downloads her email, I'm her personal "chain mail filter", reading all email she gets and deleting on sight the ones ending "Send this to 9 people right now or something bad will happen", or the like.)

scooterbird November 27 2007, 00:01:51 UTC

I was thinking more of not only the technical skill involved - impressive to a geek like me - but also the message itself, which was a plea to get rid of the world's weapons and live in peace and harmony. Seems as good a way as any to try to communicate with the powers that be.

thecanuckguy November 27 2007, 01:55:48 UTC

Yeah, but to me, absolutely cynicized by hoaxes and whatnot, and having my hoax-o-meter instantly go off as soon as I hear the English voice (as it would have had I heard the original broadcast) I would have tuned out the message (which wasn't always crystal-clear in all places, I was thankful for the transcript, which was, however, wrong in some places that are clear in the broadcast - I'm assuming the non-clear spots are from the rightful owners of the signal's attempts to un-hijack the broadcast ( ... )