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It is 12:20am. You are sitting in your concrete bungalow 23 km northwest of Nazca, Peru.

Tau Ceti will be rising in 23 minutes and will be approaching its zenith right above your head. The extra diesel generator has been engaged for supplementary power. You type in the absolute coordinates, -15deg 56' 14.928" declination and 01h 44m 04.0829s right ascension, and a large worm gear slowly grinds as the 20 meter dish aims toward the point where the star will soon appear just above the horizon.

You are nervous about getting this right and take a swig of Inca Cola and place the cool glass bottle to your forehead for a moment. As the first emissary from your planet you weigh your options carefully and finally decide on Message 17, a compilation of your favorite kiddie porn encoded as a grid of pixels using a form of differential pulse position modulation. The information is not contained in the length of the pulses, but in the varying length of pauses between them.

You ask your 'assistant', Miss Suarez, to pull down the large knife switch starting the superconducting magnet coils which help guide the electrons in your homemade 400 kW long pulsed 10 Ghz klystron. You can almost smell the ozone in the air as 300 kV appear across the secondary windings of your transformer ready to power up your hydrogen thyratron. The dish is in position, aimed almost at the horizon. You are now prepared to send your first 0.3 second test pulses. You load a test message into the messaging program and begin the first test pattern.

The ban permits robots to explore Mars. But the law does not specify the exact size and shape of the robot concerned. If the robot just happened to have the same physical dimensions as a human being--if it was a humanoid robot, or android--then it could be sent to Mars using the same launch vehicles and modules as the human mission. The robot could be equipped with biochemical functions to test the mission's life support systems. And if legislators decide to lift the Mars ban, NASA could simply swap the humanoid robot with an actual human, and immediately begin a manned mission.

In 1965, a Soviet whaler watched a battle between a squid and a 40 ton sperm whale. In this case neither were victorious. The strangled whale was found floating in the sea with the squid's tentacles wrapped around the whale's throat. The squid's severed head was found in the whale's stomach.

I'm reminded of the old "tales" that seamen told when they came back from sea. Circa ~1400s, give or take a few centuries. There was a giant seamonst that looked a lot like a giant squid, except it had a beak below the eyes on the outside of it's head. Well, giant squid have a beak, it's just betweent he tentacles instead. Here's a picture of a Kraken. Look familiar?

Publish the evidence in Science or Nature with your evidence to support your theories

This could have a potentially incredible impact on impaired and disabled people. Imagine if Stephen Hawking would be able to work at the same speed his mind seems to function at? However, what about Mind through Machine over Mind? Put your helmet on, jack in, and remote control that fish - imagine the long-time deep-sea discoveries we could make - maybe even find a live Architeuthis?

But here's another disturbing thought. John Anthony West argues that water erosion on the Sphynx indicates that the thing was built before Egypt was an arid country. That's about 10,000 years ago. Of course this runs totally against accepted archaeological thought -- but you still have to wonder if Egyptian civilization isn't a tad older than currently accepted.

Sperm whales eat squid and originally it had been thought that such battles were the result of a sperm whale taking on a squid that was just to large too be an easy meal. The incident with the Brunswick might suggest otherwise.

The Brunswick was a 15,000 ton auxiliary tanker owned by the Royal Norwegian Navy. In the 1930's it was attacked at least three times by giant squid. In each case the attack was deliberate as the squid would pull along side of the ship, pace it, then suddenly turn, run into the ship and wrap it's tentacles around the hull. The encounters were fatal for the squid. Since the animal was unable to get a good grip on the ship's steel surface, the animals slid off and fell into the ship's propellers.

Perhaps, for some unknown reason, the Brunswick looked like a whale to the squids. This might suggest that the sperm whale is not always the aggressor in the battles. In fact, though many sperm whales have been captured, few of their stomachs seemed to contain parts of giant squids (though smaller squids seem to provide a large portion of the sperm whale's diet).

LOWER THY SAILS AND RELINQUISH THY MERIT BADGES!

http://vcserv.seas.smu.edu /tastour/fauna/tiger-text.html
http://unmuseum.mus.pa.us/ttiger.htm

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