Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Heavyarms55 I saw a documentary about it, pretty interesting. What I always like about Japanese lore and legend, is that much like Greek myths, which I also really like, they always tie into real life events and real persons or places.

Here's a wiki that gives you a general picture, and with the links included, you can always dive in further, if you find that you're really interested after having read that initial information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utsuro-bune

Concerning your comment on alien communication and how it may have evolved beyond something we'd recognize or know how to use: that immediately made me wonder how those two gold-plated records with all the info about us and our planet would be interpreted by aliens, if at all, because if they've moved beyond our means of communicating, then they may not even have the devices to read and/or listen to ours. After all: nobody over here is using a gramophone with wax rolls anymore either...

I do like your idea of long distance interstellar communication, though, so maybe we share that idealist/romantic view in that respect. It would be like the WOW! signal, but then on a regular basis, and actually known and intelligible.

@HobbitGamer Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I was pretty much in the dark as explained earlier, but it all makes sense now.

@Tyranexx You're welcome. Wasn't sure if it would be the right glass for you, since it's basically a mug without a handle, and not everyone likes to drink alcohol, or any kind of cold beverage, out of a large, thick glass.

@bimmy-lee @Tyranexx Meat shields? Man, I've learned some strange things on here, over the years...
I'd also imagine that with the dawn of the vegetarian/vegan victory in sight, we might have to come up with another, more politically correct label for that...

@BruceCM Well, the definition doesn't HAVE to include them being able to perform interstellar travel, since we aren't really able to do that either (well, at least: I'm certainly not counting the slow mo version of it that we use as interstellar), so all they'd need to be is our equal at least, or anything above that.

Then again: a kind of medieval civilization would also count, seeing as they'd still be intelligent and/or humanoid.

Ah, so like some kind of ray or wave of some kind, subduing the masses? Yeah, that might work.

@Heavyarms55 Forgot to mention in the previous reply:
I agree with you on there probably not being aliens and/or alien tech in Area51. Well, maybe it is alien, but more like alien as in unknown to us, but entirely made and conceived on Earth. Anything new will sometimes look and feel entirely alien to us. Just think of all the weird military and commercial aircraft already known to us now.

But I'm not quite sure that Area51 isn't active anymore. Maybe they've gone underground, or maybe (probably) they've also expanded to other locations, but other than using it as a misinformation campaign, I can't think of many other reasons why that specific location is still so heavily guarded and also hidden/not viewable on Google Earth.

The Google Earth thing could indeed be part of a misinformation campaign, but not the heavy guarding, which also wouldn't really be very cost-effective or useful, manpower and material-wise, so I'm all but sure that there's at least still one active division of military scientists and/or engineers at work over there.

@Tyranexx - “I got me an idear, I’m gonna cheat the system and use my lighter so I can see an extra half inch in front of me in this particle board and styrofoam maze.” Brilliant. I shouldn’t have given a timeframe on the HH I used to go to because I actually have no idea how long an average walk through would take. I was always there at peak hours, so it was the longest possible walk through. There was a claustrophobic maze in the basement that had to be crawled through, and I got stuck in line right in the middle of if for about 10 minutes one time. Almost freaked out. You’re right though, it’s the kind of experience where you have to let yourself have a good time, for yourself and everyone else around you.

@Heavyarms55 - I agree, I don’t think there’s anything there at this point, even if there was something there at one time. The only thing that gives me pause is the possibility that there’s something there which can’t be moved. Maybe something like a vortex, a subterranean oil lake that leads to Middle Earth, or a burrow where El Cadejo lives. The situation I was discussing with @ThanosReXXX was purely a hypothetical “if there was something of importance there, and if civilians decided to storm the place to expose that thing” scenario.

Edit: @ThanosReXXX - Whoops, missed your last reply, sorry. Yes, some kind of ray, or noise, or light that makes it impossible to proceed. Ha, you’re right, “meat shield” is probably now an insensitive term. When zombies go vegan, I’ll start calling it a “meat like substance shield”.

@bimmy-lee "Physical replacement volunteer"

In fairness, many military complexes (maybe even all, not sure) are hidden on Google Maps, simply by virtue of them being military complexes.

@bimmy-lee Or protein-mass shield... or tofu-shield... or animal-friendly shield... or human wall shield...

As for Area51: no one is going to make me believe that there's nothing there anymore. You don't invest time, energy and money in guarding a complex that isn't even operational or used anymore, even if it may nowadays only be a subsidiary/satellite location or even just a warehouse for the actual new black site.

@Daniel36 Locations that have nothing to hide, or are no longer operational have no need to be hidden from the public. There's plenty of those kinds of locations (former military bases, black sites, underground locations etc.) on Earth, and all are open to the general audience, or at least to researchers. But Area51 is obviously not.

@ThanosReXXX I'll look into that, thanks!

And I didn't necessarily mean they've evolved beyond us like they're some kind of more advance creature biologically, just different. If evolutionary conditions on their world made auditory communication impractical, then creatures that evolved there might never develop speech based on sound and may communicate in some other way. Or technologically speaking perhaps having advanced beyond us is accurate though. For example long distance communication using quantum entanglement or perhaps gravity manipulation of some sort. Such things are not things we'd be able to detect easily, or even at all. Based on what little I know about quantum entanglement for example, is that even the scientists studying it are not yet certain what's going on.

@bimmy-lee That's an interesting idea, if there were something there that could not be moved. In that case though, if it really were that important I imagine that it would be so secure that nothing short of an atrocity level bloodbath would be able to get to it. And perhaps not even then.

Maybe it's the Raptor that Admiral Adama left behind after the colonists of the 12 Colonies of Kobol and the human-cylons settled this planet thousands of years ago, thus proving that all of this has happened before!

@Heavyarms55 Ah, okay. Interesting yet kind of damning at the same time, because that would even make it less likely that they would know what to do with those golden "communication discs" affixed to our space exploring probes.

Then again: we simple Earthlings also deciphered most of the ancient texts and scripts of civilizations pre-dating our own, so maybe there's still some hope left...

Isn't area 51 where they keep and test new airship technologies? I'd say that's worth keeping secret.

Even on recent videos from YouTubers who visited to cash in on the meme you could sometimes see test flights in the background. So it's clearly still operational.

@HobbitGamer - Organic Companion Shield.

@ThanosReXXX - I want something to be there, but if I were wagering, my money would be on us doing/dumping/testing something truly horrible out there, and now we have to protect people from it so they don’t get exposed and turn into mutant hill folk. @Heavyarms55 mentioned the probability that we’d admit “Aliens!” over admitting that someone else was more technologically advanced, which I’ll take a step further and say there are probably many things we could do to or find within the Earth that would be more unsettling to people than the existence of extra terrestrials. What if Area51 is a cover for a Titan fossil dig?

@bimmy-lee Yes!!! Organic Companion Shield!

I’d like to pretend that Area 51 has dinosaurs.

@bimmy-lee Oh, I never really thought there would be any alien corpses or whatever over there, but secret military inventions and covert operations? Definitely.

If it's just sending probes, @Heavyarms55 .... There's still the time they'd take to get here, so it's more likely they'd be on the way than already here
That's probably a lot more likely than aliens actually visiting, though
It's required for the alien visits, @ThanosReXXX or probes, even

@BruceCM I thought the discussion was if there is life equal and/or comparative to our own out there, whether or not it be humanoid. Not if they have the ability for interstellar travel within relatively short periods of time.

@Daniel36 That's kind of disturbing though. Rich, famous, and "government protected" things can simply be "missing" from the "we see every thing all the time" Google Maps....but everyone and everything else can't hide. Whoever has the most power, status, money, or governmental status is exempt from the rules that apply to everyone else, now on a digital scale, with the ability to disappear. All tech does is separate the special from the masses further and further to the point we no longer live in the same society. While there's obvious reason not to put giant targeting coordinates on military bases for the world to see, any enemy capable of hitting them is also capable of finding them without the need to ask Google.....

@Heavyarms55 Only trouble with sleeper ships is, depending on the distance, you don't actually know if it's actually still there by the time you get there, since what you saw was from centuries or millennia go, from telescopes.

Well, yes & no, @ThanosReXXX. ... All well & good if they exist a long way away, so we can't even see them or anything! So, covering how we'd find out & answering the why we haven't seen them, etc, adds in the other parts

@NEStalgia Meanwhile, our astronomers are all going nearly berserk with joy, because a meteor from another galaxy is about to enter ours and pass right by the Earth. Of course, "right by" in astronomer's terms, which still means several millions of miles...

@BruceCM Well, for now, that's up to V'ger.

Let's see if you get the origins of that one...

@ThanosReXXX Cue inappropriately lush romantic music.

I've got it covered.

@NEStalgia What, like Aerosmith?

@HobbitGamer Sheesh, I'd rather be stuck in an elevator, listening to muzak for an hour or two...
You've no idea how many times I had to listen to that crap, wannabe Jan Hammer tune while I was a junior call center agent at the start of my career.