One day you’re floating in your backyard above ground pool. Sipping on a Costco purchased pre-made margarita listening to C&C Music Factory. Life is good.

You head to sleep with dreams of another day of aquatic lounging splashing around in your head.

Wake up the next morning, slap on your trunks only to find an empty husk of pool sadly standing as a monument to disappointment in your backyard. All the water is gone, with no sign of a crack or a seam and all the surrounding grass dry as a whistle.

The solution for many who have had this problem? Aliens.

The phenomenon is explained in depth (no pun intended) on the Inexplicata blog. Interesting stuff.

[Inexplicata]

So a new research paper has come out and told us what Hollywood has been telling us for years; if we meet aliens they’re most likely going to act like 16th century conquistadors and take our resources and annihilate us in the process. Similar to Stephen Hawking’s dire warning it says contact would spell doom for us all. Space.com

The rational is that since that’s what we did in the past to other other civilizations, that’s what an advanced civilization will do to us.

There are some very serious flaws with this argument. Let’s take a look at a few of them:

1. Our galaxy is a really, really big place
The argument claims that aliens would come to earth and take our minerals and such. Why? Current estimates put the total number of planets in our galaxy in the hundreds of billions – maybe even the trillions if you count planetoids. Even if we assume an absurdly highly number of them have intelligent life, that leaves millions of planets to exploit for minerals and other resources.

The galaxy is not a bigger version of the earth. In the 15th century humans lived on every habitable continent. There was no place you could go for resources except Antarctica that didn’t have people living on it. Trying to exploit any place for resources meant that you were likely to come up against indigenous populations.

In a really big galaxy, there’s no reason to upset the locals unless that’s what you want to do.

2. Energy
Space is big. The distance between solar systems is huge. If you have some kind of technology that can easily bridge this gap or lesson the amount of energy you need to travel between stars, earth’s resources are going to look pathetic in comparison. Seriously, are we worried they’re coming here to steal our coal to fuel their space ships?

3. Comparative Advantage
Any sufficiently advanced species should have a grasp of economics. Like us, they may not always heed what they’ve learned, but if they’re flying about space they probably have a better grasp on prosperity than we do. If they’re profit motivated it would be the best possible news for us.

One of the most important principles of economics is comparative advantage. It basically means this; If you have two parties unevenly matched in skill and productivity, it’s always advantageous for both for the more skilled and productive party to let the lessor skilled party focus on production of whatever the first party is least efficient at – even if it’s more efficient than the second party.

An example would be Apple. By focusing all of its energies on designing iPhones and allowing a less-skilled party to make the iPhone, Apple increases its productivity and profit. The less-skilled party benefits by making the product. Both gain. If Apple focused all its resources on designing and making the iPhone they’d make less overall because it’s unable to maximize what it’s most efficient at.

In our alien contact scenario we’re the unskilled, inefficient party. Despite this, we still have value we can bring to a superior civilization. That value may be in providing services, cheap labor or producing reality television. Whatever it may be, the most valuable thing we can offer isn’t our resources, but 7 billion individuals with varying degrees of creativity and ingenuity. Comparative Advantage

However…
If they’re a bunch of religious zealots who abandoned everything they learned that gave them prosperity or secular zealots with no regard for the concept of individuality, we’re screwed.

Recently, in the city of Elista in the Kalmykia Republic, spotlights strange lights were witnessed by hundreds of residents.  The former head of the republic, and current president of the World Chess Federation, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, said that he was not surprised because he has met with these aliens before.

“Aliens told me: “You, humans, have not contributed anything to the development of the civilization, and you are cannibals. Isn’t this a manifestation of madness – being a cannibal?” the newspaper quoted the official as saying.

[Pravda]

New Zealand’s military has released hundreds of documents from 1952-2009 containing drawings of UFOs and also supposed to contain examples of alien writing.

They are all online ready for you to examine.

[BBC]

A tide pool in the coastal regions of Oregon is attracting a lot of attention for a few different reasons. Not only is the water a very distinct shade of neon green it also happens to be in the epicenter of an area famous for rampant UFO sightings.

Is this a freak natural occurrence? Did an alien craft decide to change their anti-freeze into the Oregonion water supply? Could this be the by-product of a horrific Ecto Cooler accident?

At the same time, more serious UFO experts are wondering about Stonefield’s green goodish water that’s attracting a lot of attention from experts, to include marine biologists at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in nearby Newport, Oregon.

“No, it’s not some sort of algae or something from the Pacific. It’s strange, and I can’t explain it,” says Hugh Miller who’s a member of The Trails End Paranormal Society of Oregon.

“They’ve taken a lot of it,” adds Miller. “But what’s left is amazing.”

More on this as it develops…

[Huliq via Conspiracy Journal]

Oh man… let’s get it on. Apparently the Australian chapter of SETI has recorded light flashes from the direction of the newly discovered planet Gliese 581g – the most Earth-like planet ever found.

Have we already ignored first contact?

He said: ‘Whenever there’s a clear night, I go up to the observatory and do a run on some of the celestial objects. Looking at one of these objects, we found this signal.

‘And you know, I got really excited with it. So next I had to analyse it. We have special software to analyse these signals, because when you look at celestial objects through the equipment we have, you also pick up a lot of noise.’

He went on: ‘We found this very sharp signal, sort of a laser lookalike thing which is the sort of thing we’re looking for – a very sharp spike. And that is what we found. So that was the excitement about the whole thing.’

If this was a warning… we are totally screwed.

[Daily Mail via Conspiracy Journal]

A crimson rainfall in India at the turn of our most recent century has been rumored to feature properties that we’ve never seen on Earth before or since. New research demonstrates that the cells of the rain can replicate in extremely hostile environments. The results also suggest that the rain might have originated in extragalactic dust clouds.

This only ends one of two ways. 1) the rain creates the zombie disease outbreak which changes our lives (and since it will be local to India: Bollywood films) forever 2) this is the first sign of the coming of Galactus.

[arxiv.org via Kurzweil]

Andrew, Brian and Justin lay out their brilliant plan for escaping the evil clutches of alien overlords. They then realize how easily a famous psychological experiment could have gone horribly wrong if the three of them had been selected. Brian also shares with the audience his disturbing camouflage technique. Plans for a mission to an Indian massacre are discussed.

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Find out which of the three used to wear a Spider-Man costume under his clothes and which ones just wore ladies underwear. Listen to them describe their plans to capture a sea beast, fight alligators and find proof of Son of Hogzilla. Also, it becomes painfully obvious that when Justin, Brian and Andrew are a dying alien civilization’s last chance for survival, it’s better to die screaming in the night then hope to see another tomorrow.

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Larry King’s ratings are in the toilet and he’s going through a very public divorce in which his child’s baseball coach has admitted to spending time in King’s estranged wife’s dugout.

So how does he keep it together?

Invite on Dan Aykroyd and let him ramble on about aliens breaking the law and being disgusted by 9/11.

[io9]

Stephen Hawking is a world renown thinker and a one of a kind personality. Now, he’s also the guy who can flop the “told ya so” card when we are enslaved by a nomadic race of aliens.

“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet,” the award-winning British scientist said in a series for the Discovery Channel, “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.”

To drive the point home, Hawking argued that aliens visiting Earth would likely be the same as when explorers first arrived in the New World.

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said.

His solution: stop trying to talk to aliens. Our solution: welcome our new wise and just overlords with open arms.

Do you want to study UFOs through college? Niagra County Community College just became your number one application.

The studing of UFOs and other unexplained phenomena from space should be a legitimate university subject, an American professor, Philip Haseley, has claimed….

The Niagara County Community College, a state university in New York, lecturer said due to the high amount of sightings every year, it should follow that students should be able to investigate phenomenon.

(A sighting) happens to millions of people (around the world),” he said.

“It’s about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study.

“It’s important that the whole subject be brought out in the open and investigated.”

Let’s be honest, it makes more sense than a philosophy degree…

[Telegraph via Derren Brown blog]

As per Popular Science:

Until recently, radio astronomers have concentrated almost exclusively on the high-energy radiation streaming in towards Earth from exotic stellar bodies like pulsars, quasars, and super-massive black holes. But now, a new European observatory called the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) has begun releasing data on the low-energy radiation that permeates the Universe.

While seemingly less sexy than high-energy research, low-energy radiation actually allows scientists to look even deeper into the past, to within 500,000 years of the Big Bang, and will provide a much more detailed account of some of the most mysterious periods of the Universe’s earliest days of existence. LOFAR is also going to be used by SETI to search for faint signs of extraterrestrial life.

Heavy, Doc.

[PopSci]

From The Telegraph:

The poll questioned 23,000 adults in 22 countries and found that more than 40 per cent of people from India and China believe that alien life exists with a human facade on this planet.

European respondents in the survey were more sceptical with only eight per cent of people from Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands convinced that life from outer space exists on earth.

Men were more likely to believe in extra-terrestrial life than women with 22 per cent convinced compared to 17 per cent of women.

Although most of those who do believe in aliens were under 35 they came from all incomes and classes. There was no breakdown for British respondents.

Thanks to Dodd Vickers for passing this along.

Brett Rounsaville is special to iTricks. Follow his hobo adventure at Amtrekker.com

After nearly two years wandering America as a homeless vagrant I’m no stranger to the weird. Like a bedbug outbreak it jumps quickly from city to city, always lurking just beneath the sheets. Sometimes you have to flip over your Temperpedic and bust out the magnifying glass, but make no mistake, weird moves fast, procreates faster, and it’s just waiting for its chance to leave its itchy red marks on each and every one of us.

Beulah, MI

Fact: Northern Michigan is known the world over for three things. Cherries, unemployment and locals eager to help out a vagrant on a quest to experience weirdness first hand and create a crop circle.

Upon hearing of my desire to learn to speak the language of the aliens (a.k.a. stomp on a bunch of plants using boards and rope) Amber, Colton, Brandon and cameraman Andy contacted me with the promise of untold acres of cover crop with which I could have my way. Knowing there was a giant blank canvas of Russian Knapweed at my disposal, how could I not hightail it to Beulah?!

However, things didn’t go quite so well as one would hope.

Apparently the aliens know a few tricks I don’t.

I’m done.

Brett.