Pioneer plaque

[jverne]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque#Criticism



here's the interesting part

According to astronomer Frank Drake, there were many negative reactions to the plaque because the human beings were displayed naked.[6] The Chicago Sun-Times retouched its image to hide the genitals of the man and woman. The Los Angeles Times received "angry letters" from readers that accused NASA of wasting taxpayer money to send "obscenities" into space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record

After NASA had received criticism over the nudity on the Pioneer plaque (line drawings of a naked man and woman), the agency chose not to allow Sagan and his colleagues to include a photograph of a nude man and woman on the record. Instead, only a silhouette of the couple was included

oh america...i love you. one of the most developed countries in the world but ashamed of human nature. sure it happened quite some time ago, but i'm willing to bet it would make people frown even today.

religion in all it's subtle glory.

 

[bbson john]

I suggest that we should sent Japanese porn into the space in the future.

Anyway, I have a feeling that the information in pioneer plaque is difficult to decode for an educated human, let alone extraterrestrial life. They should actually put articles into the plaque. I think intelligent life form can decode them, just as human decode ancient lost languages.

 

[jverne]

I suggest that we should sent Japanese porn into the space in the future.

there is nothing more human like than filling your rectum with milk and having a competition who squirt it the farthest.

 

[Raziaar]

I suggest that we should sent Japanese porn into the space in the future.

Anyway, I have a feeling that the information in pioneer plaque is difficult to decode for an educated human, let alone extraterrestrial life. They should actually put articles into the plaque. I think intelligent life form can decode them, just as human decode ancient lost languages.

Decoding ancient lost HUMAN languages, that is on the same planet, is a whole different matter from decoding an alien language who hail from a planet nothing like our own. How would you even know where to begin? You wouldn't be able to say, "Oh this, that's a tree! And that's an eagle!" and draw meaning from that.

 

[Laivasse]

Un. ****ing. Believable. There is also:

One can see that the woman's genitals are not really depicted ... It has been claimed that Sagan, having little time to complete the plaque, suspected that NASA would have rejected a more intricate drawing and therefore made a compromise just to be safe.[1] However, according to Mark Wolverton's more detailed account, the original design included a "short line indicating the woman's vulva."[2] It was erased as condition for approval by John Naugle, former head of NASA's Office of Space Science and the agency's former chief scientist.[3]

Sagan, for his part, seems to want to dispel the idea that there was significant censorship, but I think what happened with the subsequent Voyager Golden Record says it all. Goddamn prudes and puritans.

As for being too hard to decode, I think it's not all that risky a bet that any spacefaring civilisation who find the plaque will have a good grounding in astronomy, and that they'd make the correct assumptions about what the stuff on the plaque is meant to represent. After all, it is the most obvious stuff you'd expect a long distance communique from ET to say, ie. 'this is what we're like, this is where we're from'.

 

[Sam]

I don't want the aliens to think we're sluts. NASA made the right call.

 

[Ennui]

It stands to be mentioned in this thread that Carl Sagan was one of the greatest men who ever lived.

 

[jverne]

It stands to be mentioned in this thread that Carl Sagan was one of the greatest men who ever lived.

agree

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Carl Sagan was an insignificant dot.

 

[mchammer75040]

Sagan ftw, someone ban this farrowle guy, he rubs me the wrong way. Anyways yes we should send japanese tentacle porn into outer space, that way they'll know were down for anything and have been fantasizing about their arrival for awhile now. We're total sluts.