4/25    Holy shit!  Next time when you go snorkeling and you think you've found
        some new species of little sea weed or jellyfish, RUN!
        http://galleries.sunrisekings.com/mp4/madagascar/scene3/02 (NSFW)
        \_ assteenmouth is more my style

4/25    "Aliens may exist but contact would hurt humans"
        http://www.csua.org/u/qmq (news.yahoo.com)
        Normally I'd just shrug it off when I hear comments like this, but
        this time the one who said it was Stephen Hawking.
         \_ Why? what aspect of Hawking's intelligence makes him any more
            compelling than the 1000s of others who have pointed out this
            analogy?
         \_ Only Arizona will be safe.
        "White man may exist to the east but may hurt our tribe, pocahontas."
        \_ A follow-up article: http://www.csua.org/u/qo0
           '"Anything that we have here, they could find where they live,"
           Shostak said. If there was a resource found on Earth that did not
           exist on the aliens' home planet, there would certainly be easier
           ways to get or make the resource than coming here.'
           I wonder if the Native Americans had similar reasoning before
           Columbus arrived.
           \_ It's not about the resource, but the cost of obtaining a
              resource.  There was silver and gold in europe but there was
              a way cheaper way to get it from the new world.  I think the
              same happens today with food, it's cheaper to import than
              grow your own.  Same with labor (cheaper to buy chinese than
              local).  Alien physiology is unknowable, but the steady law
              of supply/demand is a constant in the universe.
              \_ Unless they have replicators.
                 \_ I'll posit that once a civilization has those deus ex
                    machines to make anything from nothing, it won't bother
                    to explore much, or care much, about anything anymore.