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Me Human, You Alien
How to Talk to an Extraterrestrial
+ Declaration of Principles Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence
by Jonathan Vos Post Emerald City Publishing
an excerpt from a book entitled MAKING CONTACT:
A SERIOUS HANDBOOK FOR
LOCATING AND COMMUNICATING
WITH EXTRATERRESTRIALS
edited by Bill Fawcett, July 1997, New York: William Morrow & Co. May be posted electronically provided that it is transmitted unaltered,
in itsentirety, and without charge.
Note: the book edited by Bill Fawcett has many fine chapters by other excellent authors. The excerpted book on this web site is an expanded version of the chapter by Jonathan Vos Post, which contains more quotations from and discussions of specific science fiction novels, stories, films, and teleplays. This on-line book excerpt is roughly 256 Kilobytes of text in length, and may load slowly if you have a slow modem, or not completely if you are short of memory.
Extraordinary claims needs extraordinary proof Extraordinary proof needs ALSO extraordinary investigation, time, honesty, effort, guts, not being afraid being ridiculed & awareness!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
IntroductionThis is your first meeting with an un-Earthly non-human entity: an Extraterrestrial (ET).
If you handle it well, you will be the greatest hero alive, and be able to make a fortune
selling your story to the media. If you blow it, the repercussions could be unimaginably
terrible, perhaps an interstellar war that could annihilate humanity.
Feeling a little stressed out? Rule Number One: DON'T PANIC.{1}
Just follow these simple guidelines, and all will be well. We hope.
Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS
A Handfull of Coins, A Loop of String, a Flashlight, and Two MagnetsHopefully, the extraterrestrial you encounter is not injured from the crash of its UFO, poisoned by local chemicals or germs, irrationally terrified of you, nor irrationally intent on injuring you. Hopefully, its senses will allow it to see the items you are carrying in your pocket right now -- if you've read this Handbook before this Close Encounter, and had time to prepare. If the ET has radically different senses, seems uncommunicative, or otherwise nonresponsive, then you will have to skip ahead to the time that teams of experts have been assembled to assist you in your task of Contact. But if these problems do not obstruct you, you will be initiating communications with a set of cheap, easily obtained communications tools, using the following: (1) 18 specific coins, totalling $3.27, as detailed shortly. (2) A loop of string, at least 48" (but no more than 72") in circumference. (3) A pocket flashlight. (4) Two small bar magnets. (5) A pad of paper and a couple of pens or pencils. This may not sound like much, but may work wonders. If you also have a camera, a videocam, and/or a cassette recorder, so much the better. Obviously, the more rolls of film, blank cassettes, and extra batteries you have, the better. Practice using your equipment beforehand, so that you may use it easily when under the unprecedented excitement and stress of First Contact. Photograph and tape everything that happens in your Close Encounter if you can. If not, then at least take quick and careful notes on what happens, using the paper and pen or pencil, until the experts can take the next steps. Good luck! Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS Pocket Change Worth BillionsNow that you've bought A Handbook for UFO Contact, make a further investment of $3.27. Get the following coins assembled, and keep them in a little envelope or pocket, separate from your usual pocket change: 1 Susan B. Anthony dollar coin $1.00 2 pennies $0.02 2 nickles $0.10 9 dimes $0.90 3 quarters $0.75 1 half-dollar coin $0.50 -- ----------------- ----- 18 miscellaneous coins totalling $3.27 Practice arranging these coins on a flat surface as shown in figure 1. These coins represent the Sun, planets, and major moons based on their approximate relative sizes as follows: SUN Susan B. Anthony coin (a silver dollar is even better, if possible) MERCURY a penny VENUS a nickel EARTH a nickel, circled by the MOON: a dime MARS a penny JUPITER the half-dollar, circled by the four giant Galilean moons: IO, EUROPA, GANYMEDE, AND CALLISTO, represented by four dimes SATURN a quarter, with its giant moon TITAN: a dime URANUS a quarter NEPTUNE a quarter, with its giant moon TRITON: a dime PLUTO a dime, with its moon CHARON: a dime When you meet the Extraterrestrial, locate a flat surface (sidewalk or bare dirt) between the two of you, and lay out the coins as you have practiced. If it is daytime, point to the Dollar coin, then point to the Sun, and say "SUN!" If you have your pocket flashlight, hold it close to the Sun-Dollar, so that the coin is brightly illuminated. Then point to the second nickel, pat the ground, point at the ground all around you, and say "EARTH!" Pick up the Earth-nickel and, keping it close to the ground, move it around the Sun-dollar, then put it back down where it was. If the moon is visible, point to it, point to the dime next to the Earth-nickel, and say "MOON!" Pick up the Moon-dime and, keeping it close to the ground, move it around the Earth-nickel, then put it back down where it was. Then be silent for a minute, back away from the coins, and watch for a response. If the ET knows the structure of our Solar System, as observed by it or its companions from remote observation, or by more immediate observation on the way in towards Earth, it will recognize the model of the Solar System that you have shown it. This will establish that you are an astronomically sophisticated being, who knows the way around your own local part of the Galaxy. The ET now has the chance to show you something about that Solar System model. It might, for example, place a few pebbles or sand grains in between the Mars-penny and the Jupiter-half-dollar to show you where most of the asteroids are concentrated. It may indicate planets or the Oort or Kuiper Belt of comets far beyond Pluto. It may convey some information about the Moon or some other planets, if it made one or more stops on the way to Earth. It may construct a model of its own Solar System. If it moves the coins into any new configuration, be sure to record that in your written or photographic notes. You have gotten information that may be worth billions of times your original $3.27. Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS A Loop of String, Approximately 72" in CircumferenceAllied pilots, during World War II, who had to fly over certain remote and exotic
areas such as Borneo (now called Kalimantan), were encouraged to carry a loop of string
up to six feet long, the ends of which were tied together to make a single loop about
three feet long.
The idea was that if they crash landed their plane in an area where
non-English-speaking natives were likely to be present,
the pilot should (when someone approached through the jungle),
casually take the loop of string from his pocket and begin to make
a "cat's cradle" string figure, and as many other string figures as he knew.
It is said that, on more than one occasion, this was actually tried.
In each case, the story goes, the native watched with increasingly friendly interest,
and then politely borrowed the loop to demonstrate some string figures popular in
his own tribe.
It seems to me that such an anthropological First Contact technique might be useful
in extraterrestrial First Contact as well.
You will find out if and how the ET pays attention to your activity,
have something to talk about, and -- after you've handed the loop to the ET --
learn something about how dexterously the ET manipulates at least
one kind of object.
If you're very lucky, the ET will show you patterns of its own culture.
After all, the string figure has been (sometimes independently) discovered and
perfected by members of the tribes, areas, or nations:
Apache, Austria, Australia, Borneo, Chaco, Cherokee, China, Chippewa, Clayoquaht,
Denmark, England, Eskimo, France, Germany, Hawaii, India, Ireland, Japan, Kabyles,
Kiwai, Klamath, Korea, Kwakiutl, Lifu, Melanesia, Natik, Nauru, Navaho, New Guinea,
the Netherlands, New Zealand, Omaha, Onandaga, Osage, Pawnee, the Philippines,
Polynesia, Pueblo, Pygmy, Salish, Scotland, Switzerland, Tannas, Tewas, Tlingit,
Tsimshian, Uap, Ulungu, Wajiji, and Zuni.
The best reference on how to weave with both hands a hundred intricate patterns
supposed to represent natural and artificial objects is
String Figures and How to Make Them {77}.
Perhaps the most important anthropologist ever, Dr. Franz Boas,
was the first to publish a careful description of how a so-called primitive people
(Eskimo) make string figures, in 1888.
Other cultures use "a thong of skin... a cord of cocoanut fibre ...
[or] of human hair finely plaited. A woven cord which does not kink
as easily as a twisted cord will prove most satisfactory;
unfortunately, it cannot be spliced, the ends therefore must be knotted
in a small square knot or laid together and bound round with thread."
We describe below how to make the common "cat's-cradle" and Figure 3
is a copy of an illustration by Walter E. Roth in Brisbane, Australia, in 1902.
Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cat's CradleThe first thing to do is to make the familiar "Cat's Cradle" as described below. It is known in many parts of the world. In Southern China, it is called Kang Sok = Well Rope; in Korea it is called Ssi-teu-ki = Woof-taking; in Japan it is called Aya ito tori = Woof pattern string-taking; in Germany it is variously called Aheben = Taking off, Faden-aheben = Taking-off strings, Fadenspeil = String game, and Hexenspeil = Witch's game. Step One: Take the untwisted loop of string and pass the four fingers of each hand through the loop, and then separate the hands, keeping the palms facing each other. You are now holding the loop taut so that each end of it passes across the backs of your hands and one side of the loop rests on the webs of flesh between thumb and forefinger. Step Two: With the thumb and index finger of the left hand, turn the left near string away from you across your left palm, and then toward you across the back of the left hand, bringing the string to the right between the thumb and index finger. Separate the hands, keeping the palms facing each other. You are now holding the loop taut. You now have two strings across the back of your left hand (a little loop around your left hand) and one string across the back of your right hand. Step Three: With the thumb and index finger of the right hand, turn the right near string away from you across your right palm, and then toward you across the back of the right hand, bringing the string to the left between the thumb and index finger. Separate the hands, keeping the palms facing each other. You are now holding the loop taut. You now have two strings across the back of each hand, and a single string across each palm. Step Four: Bring the hands together, and put the right middle finger up under the string which crosses the left palm, and draw the loop out on the back of the finger by separating the hands (palms still facing each other). Step Five: Bring the hands together, and put the left middle finger up under the string which crosses the right palm, and draw the loop out on the back of the finger by separating the hands (palms still facing each other). You should now be in the position shown in Figure 2. There is a loop on each middle finger and two strings across the back of each hand; the "cradle" being formed by a straight near string, a straight far string, and the crossed strings of the middle finger loops. Show this to the ET. Note its reaction. If there are two people involved in the First Contact, then you are in good shape. First of all, this means that one of you can be doing the talking, motioning, and demonstrating, while the other keeps notes, takes photographs, or narrates into a cassette recorder. If there are two of you, you can now "play cat's cradle" by first having one of you make the cat's cradle according to the above five steps, and then taking turns transforming it through a series of different configurations as follows. Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS Soldier's Bed = Church Window = Fish PondThe next step in the game of cat's cradle has three different English names,
and in Korea is called Pa-tok-hpan = Chess board;
and in Japan nekomata = mountain cat.
By "near", "far", "left", and "right" we describe the position
of the strings as seen by the person from whose hands
the figure is being taken away.
Step One: Person "A" makes the Cat's Cradle as above.
Step Two: Person "B" puts his left thumb away from "A"
under the right near middle finger string and his left index finger
away from "A" under the left near middle finger string.
Step Three: Person "B" brings the thumb and index finger together
and picks up between their tips the two near middle finger strings
just where they cross at the near side of the figure.
Steps Four and Five: In the same way, person "B" picks up
the two far middle finger strings, by putting the right thumb toward "A"
under the right far middle finger string,
and the right index finger towards "A"
under the left far middle finger string,
then bringing the right index finger and right thumb together
and picking up between their tips the two far middle finger strings
just where they cross at the far side of the figure.
Step Six: Now separating his hands, "B" draws the right hand away from "A"
and the left hand towards "A" (figure 742) and carries
the thumb and index finger of each hand,
still holding the strings,
around the corresponding side string of the figure
and up into the center of the figure (Figure 743).
Step Seven: Then, by drawing his hands apart
and separating the index fingers widely from the thumbs
he removes the figure from "A's" hands
and extends the "Soldier's Bed" (Figure 744).
There is now a loop on each thumb,
a loop on each index finger,
and a string passing across the backs
of the thumbs and index fingers of each hand.
The figure is formed of the four finger loops crossing in the middle,
a straight near string and a straight far string.
There are a series of other transformations that will end up passing
the figures back and forth between the two players through at least
eight configurations total, the other six of which are called in English "candles",
"Manger", "Diamonds", "Cat's Eye", "Fish in a Dish", and "Clock."
Consult the reference book listed, or a bunch of children,
to learn the other positions. You may be challenged to learn
more complicated string figures, too. Practice makes perfect.
You can now not only play with children and other UFO enthusiasts,
but have a chance to do something peaceful, interesting, and revealing
when you make First Contact.
When I first wrote this, I thought that I was the first to contemplate it for
human-ET first contact. But in further researching this chapter,
I found a science fiction author, the anthropologist Chad Oliver,
had beaten me to the punch my some 36 years.
In the novelUnearthly Neighbors {101},
I was stunned to read this paragraph [p.73, revised edition]:
Tom Stein maneuvered two of the [ET] kids, both boys,
down the trail that led to the stream [on Sirius Nine].
He took a length of cord from his pocket and made a
skillful cat's cradle on his fingers. The boys were
intrigued, and watched him closely. Tom went through
his whole bag of string tricks--the antropologist's ace
in the hole--and tried his level best to make friends.
So give Chad Oliver credit, not me, when you play cat's cradle with an ET
and make friends. Assuming, of course, that anthropologists and
science fiction writers are on the right track at all.
Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS
A Pocket FlashlightA small pocket flashlight (with as many extra batteries as you like to carry) is a good thing to have in any case, as you know if you drop your keys in the dark on a moonless night. It may be very valuable during extraterrestrial First Contact. This surely applies if the First Contact begins, or continues into, the night. If the ET communicates with light (see the handbook section on "Sound, Light, Viruses, and Neutrinos," (a) Light), then it is absolutely necessary. The flashlight helps to demonstrate that you are a technological being. Don't point it first at the ET; that might appear hostile, rude, or weapon-like. The flashlight gives you a chance to point at various things and speak their names: "ground, tree, foot, human, ET, coins, string.... and what is that thing in your third claw?" Even parrots can be taught to learn the names of things repeatedly pointed to or held up: "This is a grape. I'm holding a grape. Do you want the grape?" The flashlight can be used to illuminate the pad of paper and writings done with pen or pencil. It can be used to illuminate the coin in the center of the coin-model solar system, to make it shine like the Sun. If you wear eyeglasses, or carry a magnifying glass or other lens, you can use it to demonstrate simple concepts of optics (Figure 4). You can cast shadows with it. If you have sunglasses or can knock use the plastic of your car tail-light, then you can project different colors, and name those colors. The use of the flashlight can be occasionally contrasted with, amplified by, or accompanied by the the flash of your camera, if you are carrying one. Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS Two Small Bar MagnetsIf you have two little bar magnets, the kind often glued to the back of a decorative "refrigerator magnet," then there are some things you can demonstrate and test. The purposes of these experiments are four: (1) To show to the ET that you are a representative of a technologically sophisticated scientific civilization; (2) To provide specific scientific items and phenomena to talk about and to develop a common vocabulary, if possible; (3) To see how the ET reacts to demonstrations of scientific principles; (4) and to begin testing the properties of UFO or ET-related substances. You should have at least the two small bar magnets suggested here. You can enhance your demonstrations to the ET if you also have: (1) a pocket compass (2) a long steel knitting needle (3) a few iron tacks (4) a long iron nail (5) a sewing needle (6) a cork (7) thread or string beyond that used for your cat's cradle demonstration. Before you meet the ET, mark your bar magnets to show which are the north poles (the poles that attract the north-seeking end of a compass needle) and which are the south poles (the poles that attract the south-seeking end of a compass needle). What kind of magnets are the two that you are carrying in your ET communications kit? They are permanent magnets, as opposed to electromagnets that only work when electricity is flowing through wires. Permanent magnets have been known for thousands of years (at least since the ancient Greeks investigated the mineral lodestone, today called magnetite), but have become much more sophisticated in the 20th century. Two Japanese physicists, Honda and Takei (no, not the car company or the actor who played Sulu on Star Trek) in 1917 first added cobalt to tungsten steel to make powerful permanent magnets. In 1932 another Japanese team created even stronger magnets from alloys of iron, nickel, and aluminum. Many such materials are available under trade names such as Alcomax, Alnico, Hycomax, and Iconal. Other magnets are made today from ceramic materials. The poles of the magnets may be near the ends or the faces of the magnets. Magnetic rubber strips are often used on refrigerator doors, and rolls of this strip are available in hardware stores. Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS Experiment 1: Magnet and CompassIt is believed by some historians that the Chinese may have discovered the magnetic compass. The Chinese Emperor Hwang-To is said to have had a magnetic (lodestone) compass in his chariot, approximately 2050 years ago. We are certain that the French crusader Petrus Peregrinus, in 1269 A.D., gave detailed written descriptions of a floating compass and a pocket compass much like the kind we use today. Nearly 450 years ago Queen Elizabeth I's physician, William Gilbert, first hypothesized that the Earth itself acts like a giant magnet. He built a spherical model of the Earth out of lodestone and showed that it had a magnetic field around it similar to the field of the Earth. We think that the Earth's magnetic field is caused by a molten iron/nickel/sulfur material swirling in the Earth's core -- the so-called dynamo effect. The much more powerful magnetic fields of Jupiter and Saturn are believed to be caused by dynamos of metallic hydrogen, a substance first created on Earth (at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory) in early 1996. Most likely the ET comes from a planet that has a magnetic field, and therefore has some chance of recognizing the behavior of a pocket compass. Show the pocket compass to the ET. Say "Compass." Place it on the ground. Point to the needle that's pointing north, point with your arm and finger in that same direction, and say "North." Point in the opposite direction and say "South." Observe if the ET looks at the compass, in the directions that you have pointed, and write down or dictate into a cassette recorder what the response is. Move one of your bar magnets near the compass, so that the needle points away from north. Hold up the magnet and say "magnet." Show how the bar magnet can pick up tacks or the long nail. Write down what the ET says or does. If there are any pieces of UFO material or other substances nearby that seem related to the ET, pick them up and prepare to use them in the next experiment/demonstration. If possible, float one of the bar magnets on top of a cork in a puddle or open container of water. It should also point north/south, like the needle of a pocket compass. Finally, if you and the ET are still interested, you can show that the magnetic north pole and the geographic north pole are not in the same place. This is very important to people who use the compass the actually navigate. You can show the angle between true north (that is, geographic north) and magnetic north (as shown by the pocket compass) in your First Contact location. When the sun is at the highest point in the sky (noon, unless modified by daylight savings time) then hold a plumb line (a string or thread with any weight tied to the end) so that it casts a shadow on a piece of paper lying on the ground. This shadow will lie in a north-south direction pointing towards true north (geographic north). Now place your pocket compass on the shadow, and draw a line showing the direction in which it points. The angle between this line and the shadow is called the declination. Some planets have a very large declination, such as Uranus in our solar system. The ET has a chance to show whether or not it understands this, if the ET has given meaningful responses to other experiments/demonstrations so far. Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS Experiment 2: Testing UFO MaterialYou know from ordinary experience that some materials can be picked up by magnets and some cannot. The situation is a little more complicated than that, as shown in Fig.297. Instead of merely classifying materials into two categories, magnetic and non-magnetic, we need to be more scientific if we are going to analyze materials relating to an ET. Two centuries ago Michael Faraday discovered that all the materials he tested were influenced in one way or another by a magnetic field. Some were attracted by a magnet, and some were repelled although they weren't themselves magnets. We call the kind of material which is strongly attracted ferromagnetic because they behave like iron (Latin: ferrum). This includes iron, nickel, and cobalt. If you have a Canadian nickel, it is ferromagnetic because it is mostly nickel, and will cling to a magnet the same way as does iron. The kind of material that is very weakly attracted to a magnet (so that under ordinary conditions it seems that they are not attracted) are called paramagnetc. The kind of material that is weakly repelled by a magnet is called diamagnetic. Diamagnetic materials include bismuth, copper, glass, water, and mercury. These weak repulsions typically take a strong electromagnet to discover. Another category of material that has been rapidly developed since World War II is the ferrimagnetic which have magnetic properties although they are electrical insulators (nonmetals). Examples of this type are the ferrites. A ferrite rod is used as the aerial of many transistor radios. If there are pieces of the material of the UFO available, or pieces of material near the ET, test them with your magnets and make a first rough attempt to classify them as ferromagnetic, paramagnetic, ferrimagnetic, or diamagnetic. If the compass needle moves when you hold a piece of ET material near it, then that material is itself a magnet. If the material does not appear to be a magnet, but is strongly attracted to and sticks to one of your bar magnets, it is ferromagnetic. If that material is not shiny and metallic in appearance, then it may be ferrimagnetic, although this needs to be validated by showing that it is not an electrical conductor (which would require a battery and wires, or a continuity tester). If the material does not seem to respond to the magnet at all, it may be either paramagnetic or diamagnetic. If it is clearly repelled by your bar magnet, then it is diamagnetic. Maybe the ET has materials that are more powerful diamagnets than anything we have. It is worth investigating. To test for diamagnetism, you may need to suspend a piece of the material by a thread and dangle it right between the north pole of one bar magnet and the south pole of the other. If the ET material twists on the thread to line up with the line connecting the two magnets, it is ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic. If the ET material twists on the thread so that it is perpendicular to the line connecting the two magnets, it is diamagnetic. See figure 296. Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS Experiment 3: Magnetization, Magnetic Induction, and Curie PointTake the unmagnetized knitting needle. Hold your pocket compass (if you have one) to show that both ends of the knitting needle attract the same pole of the compass. Now magnetize the knitting needle with the bar magnet, as shown in Figure 290. Hold the knitting needle immobile on the ground, touch the north pole of one bar magnet (the end that attracts the "North" pointing pole of the compass) and drag the magnet along the length of the knitting needle to its end, then (keeping the knitting needle in place), pull away the magnet and repeat exactly a few time. The knitting needle should now be magnetized. Show this to the ET by demonstrating that one end of the knitting needle attracts a different pole of the compass than the other end does. Attach a chain of tacks to the end of one of your bar magnets as shown in figure 299. Strongly heat one of the tacks with a match flame or (better) a pocket cigarette lighter until that tack and the tacks beneath it fall off. When a ferromagnetic material (like the tack) is heated above its "Curie point" it stops being ferromagnetic. Hang a long nail (if you have one) suspended from the south pole of one of your bar magnets, as shown in figure 300. The X end of the nail has now become, by magnetic induction, a north pole, and the Y end a south pole. Bring the north pole of the other bar magnet near the Y end of the hanging nail. It should be attracted, and swing to point towards the north pole of the second bar magnet. Now bring the south pole of the other bar magnet near the Y end of the hanging nail. It should be repelled, and swing away from the south pole. When a magnet is brought close to a ferromagnetic material such as iron, some of the "magnetic domains" in the material change so that the material becomes a magnet. This process is called magnetic induction. When the magnet is removed, most of the domains change back to the way they were before, so that the material is no longer a magnet. Materials which act this way are called nonretentive or magnetically soft. Magnetically soft materials, like your iron nail, mumetal, and Permalloy C are used in the cores of electromagnets and transformers. They stop being magnets as soon as the electricity is switched off. Other materials, including steel, have microscopic magnetic domains that stay in place once changed by a magnet, so that the steel continues to be a magnet after being in contact with the magnet that touched them. Your knitting needle is an example of that. Take a piece of any ferromagnetic material you have identified from the UFO or ET. Stroke it with one of the bar magnets, and then see if it has been induced to become a magnet or not. Now you can determine if the ET material is magnetically hard or soft. [Some of these experiments and diagrams are suggested by, or modified from "Physics is Fun, Book Two", Jim Jardine, London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1964] Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS A Pad of Paper and a Couple of Pens or PencilsHave some ready -- you should write stuff down. Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS Speech Lessons, Informants, and Two or More ExtraterrestrialsYour best chance to start learning the extraterrestrial language is
if there are two or more of them, and that they are speaking to each other.
If so, the following steps are recommended, based in part on
How to Learn an Unwritten Language {71}:
(1) Determine what your best approach is to language learning.
Some people learn best by merely hearing and mimicry (imitation),
the way children learn, leaving the pattern making to their unconscious minds.
A few people are natural mimics, who apprehend, react to, and remember
new language patterns almost at once.
If you are such a person, it is good luck for planet Earth,
as you will not have to consciously analyze the extraterrestrial language
in order to speak to the ET or ETs in a way that they will at least
recognize as language.
You should correct your natural bias by being particularly careful
to record every ET speech act, and not being distracted by your own
involvement in mimicry.
You should make a concerted effort to use whatever analytical
approaches are recommended in this Handbook, in addition to your own talent.
Other people learn best by memorizing rules and vocabulary,
then practicing speech patterns as examples of those rules.
If you are such a person, then you will be virtually unable to use
language patterns until you have explicit conscious insight and awareness
of the relationships of sounds and system.
To compensate for your bias, you must force yourself to make
a social contact with the ET or ETs, thus avoiding the danger of
an overly elaborate written analysis which does not contribute to
the possibility of some small degree of conversation with the ET.
(2) Make and effort to listen carefully, while recording,
normal conversation between the two or more ETs
(or, at least, any soliloquizing by a single ET).
The ability to catch even a hint of the "drift of a conversation"
will be a great success. At first, look and listen for the ETs'
culturally acceptable indications of continued attention,
or the YES of agreement.
These are prerequisites for you to contribute to any dialogue
or group conversation. The most likely opportunity for observing
conversation between the ETs is when they are sharing a work task,
such as trying to repair their UFO, or collecting samples,
or tending to the medical needs of an injured ET.
In case of such apparent injury, it is recommended that you don't do anything.
The Hippocratic Oath of doctors says that first of all,
you must do no harm. In the case of the ET, anything you do --
changing the position of the body, or wiping away fluid,
or pouring water into a mouth, may be a fatal mistake.
(3) Make many attempts to engage in conversations with individual ETs,
using the coins, string, flashlight, and so forth as something to talk about.
You should seek out chances for conversation, and should make a point of
talking to every ET with whom you have direct contact.
Make a particular effort with any ET which intuitively or analytically
seems to be a child, based on body size or playfulness.
You might well be wrong -- for example, a "dimorphic" species
is one in which two sexes (if they have two sexes) may differ greatly
in size or appearance -- but as we will explain in the section
"What is the Meaning of Meaning?"
Children, especially babies, have a superior ability to learn
new languages quickly.
(4) Spend several brief periods, within view of the ET or ETs,
listening intensively to materials recorded on your audio cassettes,
and mimicking them as best you can.
These materials should include both connected texts and word lists.
The texts that you will repeatedly try to mimic should be short enough
to be repeated several times in a single listening and rehearsal period.
The purpose of doing this is that the cassette recorded accurately records
such things and rhythm and intonation pattern, and if you listen often enough,
you may pick up enough "feel" to be ably to mimic, albeit crudely at first.
This is not likely to be possible in "free conversation" where patterns
may shift too quickly for you to follow. In addition, by using the cassette
recorder, you can concentrate your attention on hearing and mimicry without
being confused by trying to understand the meaningful content of the sounds
or of planning to say something.
Listen to recorded lists of words, to try to distinguish tone,
stress, and length patterns. Listening for these things should
alternate between lists in which one feature is identical,
and lists with contrasts between items (as discussed in our section on
"By Way of Contrast."
For example, if the ET language has syllables, practice with one list
of ET words that have stress on the first syllable,
one with stress on the second syllable, and one with stress on the third syllable.
(5) Gather new data whenever possible. There are three ways to do this.
(a) Record and make written notes on any ET utterance you hear,
and write down or photograph the context in which it occurred.
(b) If one of the ETs volunteers a special role in trying to
communicate with -- the "informant" -- then use the coins, string,
flashlight, and so forth to provoke or elicit language data
from the informant.
(c) Record conversations between ETs on cassette.
It is the unelicited data (a and c) that are most likely to be smooth and accurate;
elicited data is likely to be "wooden" and "foreign," contaminated with
the flavor of the English language that you are using in you speech.
Conversely, some ET language details can be studied and understood more
quickly if the crucial examples are elicited in a patterned way,
such as by moving through the list of numbers, planet names,
objects that you point to, or the Periodic Table of the Elements.
(6) Processing of data. When the top scientific experts begin to arrive,
they will take over this important task.
It is vital that each day's collection of audio, video, photographic,
and written noted data be processed almost at once. A backlog of material
that has not been analyzed becomes a source of frustration and a roadblock
in the way of further activity.
This means that all audio-recorded data should be transcribed
as soon as possible (and soon after, computerized).
Each ET utterance elicited from the informant should be planned
to illuminate some particular problem or an example of a particular pattern.
(7) Organize the Contact episodes. At least the nucleus of what you learn
every couple of hours should be a planned lesson, including drilling
on the sound system (4 and 9), one or more grammatical patterns
to be practiced until you develop some ET language habits,
and some vocabulary items (the ET name, the name for "Earth",
the words for "One, Two, Three") to be memorized within the
grammatical context.
You are both student, trying to learn a bit of the ET language,
and teacher, trying to get the ET to get a little English.
(8) Drill and memorize what you learn from each session.
Review old sessions. Each session, you should hope to learn something new,
have the ET learn something new, and have a shared experience of
mutual satisfaction with progress.
What you learn should be reviewed often, and not counted as learned
until you and/or the ET can use that material in "free conversation"
at normal speech speed.
(9) Drill on the sound system with the informant.
Each session, have several intensive minutes of contrastive listening and mimicry,
especially by you of ET sounds that are different from English sounds,
and by the ET of English sounds that are different from ET sounds.
Your cassette recorded may not be up to the task, as only high-fidelity
sound equipment can accurately record fine differences between phonetic sounds
(such as "sss" versus "fff", or "t" versus a glottal stop).
Contrastive listening means listening for particular sounds and,
especially, listening to pairs of words in which similar but contrastively
different sounds occur. In such drill, you and the ET are doing intentionally
and consciously what a child does unconsciously in its hours of repetitive babble.
There is a possibility that would help you very much, if you are lucky.
That is, the ETs may have intentionally simplified their language,
and made it more logical. They might communicate through,
not an ancient "natural" language, but through a more modern,
deliberately designed "artificial" language.
After all, humans have proposed or created over 500 such languages
since the 17th century, such as Basic English, OPA, Loglan, Interglossa,
and Esperanto.
If the ETs have created such a language, presumably to eliminate
the threat of war, to aid in complex enterprises between beings of
different birthplace, and to aid in international, interplanetary,
and/or interstellar communications, then they have made your job vastly more simple. But don't count on it.
Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS
Protocol and Protagoras: The Empirical ApproachIn this handbook, we assume that the evidence of the ET is so overwhelming
that nobody on the scene can dispute the fact that humans and aliens
must now communicate.
We assume that the survival and comfort of the ET is not in
immediate jeopardy, so that you may concentrate on careful communications
while a team is brought to bear on solving longer-term problems.
We also assume that your being in the right place at the right time
makes you the focus of all activity for some time to come, and gives you
access to an essentially unlimited line of credit from the local government
and banking institutions.
If these conditions are not met, you must simply do your best to
apply the lessons of this Handbook as best as you can with the more
limited resources at your immediate disposal.
Let's say, though, that all is well at the outset.
The first step is to be sure that you can concentrate on communicating,
and not be tied up in local politics.
Appoint someone you trust to be Political Liaison, and issue them this order:
"Your job is to keep the politicians off my back while I talk to the ET.
Issue a communiquŽ at once, citing this Handbook's
"Appendix: Declaration of Principles Following the Detection of
Extraterrestrial Intelligence,"
the First Soviet-American Conference on Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI) {2};
U.S. President Jimmy Carter's and Secretary General of the United Nations
Kurt Waldheim's statements recorded on the Voyager spacecraft record {3},
the International SETI Petition by Carl Sagan and friends {4},
and the SETI Post-Detection Protocol [see Appendix].
Invite the delegations of all nations, as well as local, county, state,
and federal authorities, to convene a council to agree on a political modality.
That will keep them too busy to bother me."
The 1982 film by Steven Spielburg, ET" The Extraterrestrial {5},
one of the most successful box office draws of all time,
showed us a loveable extraterrestrial, but also gave the worst possible advice
for you in your own Close Encounter.
In E.T., the plot hinges on well-intentioned children hiding the
abandoned extraterrestrial from government authorities,
on the grounds that scientists would just want to kill and dissect it.
Nonsense!
Your job is to make sure that the proper authorities are notified,
but that you have assembled such a winning team of experts that the
government can't take the lead away from you.
The second step, therefore, is to get the proper technical assistance.
Appoint a second trusted friend as Technical Liaison, and issue him or her
this order:
"I need the following people and their staffs here immediately
(then get him a copy of the Appendix: People to Contact for First Contact,
listed at the end of this article).
Never mind, for now, who they are.
Trust me, they are all influential enthuiasts for and/or experts on
Communications with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI).
Tell them that they all work for me, and if they don't follow my orders,
I won't give them access to data or list them as co-authors of anything.
Go get them!"
The third step is to secure local infrastructure.
Appoint a third trusted friend as Logistics Commander.
Tell him or her the following:
"(1) reserve every hotel room, motel room, bed and breakfast,
student dormitory room, and rental car or truck in a 20 mile radius;
(2) phone the Regional Sales Director of AT&T, MCI, and Sprint and demand a
dedicated T-3 phone line from each of them,
being sure to tell each who else you asked;
(3) call the PR Director of Apple, IBM, Sun, and Hewlett-Packard,
tell them each that you need 100 top-of-the-line workstations
and their fastest Internet server,
fifty thousand gigbytes of hard disks,
emergency power generators, and tell each which competitors you talked to;
(4) call every restaurant and fast-food outlet within 20 miles and tell them
that you'll list their names and numbers on press releases if they
provide free food for the duration;
(5) call the nearest major hospital and tell them you have over
100 top scientists arriving from all over the world who are already
over-excited, and need stand-by medical observation and support.
And get me a couple of aspirin."
Theory is of little consequence right now.
You need to tap the brains of masters of the field of communications
and analyze how they actually work.
The first man to do this was the fifth century B.C. Greek sophist Protagoras.
He is credited with being the first to distinguish sentence types:
narration, question, answer, command, report, prayer, and invitation.
Today we classify more forms of what Firth calls "speech functions," such as:
commands, requests, invitations, suggestions, advice, offers of assistance,
gratitude, agreement and disagreement, greeting, leave-taking, encouragement,
permission, promising, apology, threats, warning, insulting, pleadings,
and so forth.
"There are very many such terms in the everyday language
(one might compare, on a different plane, G. W. Allport's collection of
18,000 terms in English referring to personality characteristics" {73} (p.47).
Aristotle also said that Protagoras was the first to call attention
to the distinctions of gender and tense.
Your job is like his, except a million times harder.
Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS
What Kind of Language?We assume that the ET is not a super-linguist who already knows English,
or can learn it while you are still getting a grip on the situation.
We assume that he does not carry the equivalent of a Universal Translator
(a probably impossible gadget) or The Klingon Dictionary:
The Official Guide to Klingon Words and Phrases {6} by Marc Okrand.
No, we must think long and hard about what Language is,
and how our experience with human languages might extend to ET languages
(Xenolinguistics).
Francis P. Dineen, Georgetown University Institute of Languages and
Linguistics, says that there are 11 characteristics of language.{7}
He was thinking of human languages, so we will need to make a few adjustments.
He lists:
(1) Language is Sound
(2) Language is Linear
(3) Language is Systematic
(4) Language is a System of Systems
(5) Language is Meaningful
(6) Language is Arbitrary
(7) Language is Conventional
(8) Language is a System of Contrasts
(9) Language is Creative
(10) Languages are Unique
(11) Languages are Similar
Let's take these one at a time, and reconsider them in the UFO context.
Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS
Sound, Light, Viruses, and Neutrinos
Language is Sound. Or is it? Most humans speak and listen to language, using the same fleshy articulatory equipment to produce speech sounds and to hear them. The sounds may appear strange to you, but they may be accurately described in terms of the movements of organs such as vocal cords, tongue, lips, and teeth. But the primacy of speech is not absolute, given the importance of writing, and the use of various sign languages. We have no evidence yet that the ET uses sound, or writing, or sign language, so we must immediately find out what MEDIUM is used for language signals in the ET. Your science team, since they arrived, has been observing the ET with every scientific instrument imaginable. Ask them which medium the ET seems to be emitting the most complex signals in:
Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS (a) Light. Aliens may be emitting electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves [see "The Waveries" {99} for a story of ETs which ARE radio waves], microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays, or gamma rays. Deploy any additional sensors needed in each frequency range, record everything, digitize those records into the computer system, and tell the scientists to set up software-controlled gadgets to emit coded radiation in whatever frequency or frequencies the ET is emitting. Examples in science fiction of light-communicating ETs include the novel "VOR" {8} (which stands for Violet Orange Red), and Steven Spielberg's 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind {9}. Even on Earth, quite a variety of lifeforms generate light. As one essay {72} puts it: "Many insects, fish, crustaceans, squids, fungi, bacteria, and protozoa bioluminesce: They throb with light. The angler fish even hangs a glowing lure from its mouth, which attracts prey. A male firefly flashes its cool, yellow-green semaphores of desire, and the female, too, is randy, she flashes back her consent." The legend of the Fall of Troy includes mention that the news of ultimate victory was flashed from Asia Minor to Greece by a sequence of signal fires, a technique that led to the rise of the heliograph (relaying signals by reflecting sunlight by mirrors spaced far apart). Try to determine if the ET is emitting light by natural, biological means, or by the use of some hardware. Use your pocket flashlight and/or camera flash to copy whatever light patterns you can see. Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS (b) Sound. The ET may be producing subsonics, too low in frequency for humans to hear, as Blue Whales, alligators, and elephants do; or sounds that we can hear; or sounds too high in pitch for our ears, as dolphins, praying mantises, and bats can do. Bats "echolocate" by responding to the echos of the 50,000 clicks per second that they can produce (more than twice the frequency we can hear). The frequency range may be narrow, or it may cover many more octaves than human speech, as with dolphins. Record everything, and get it digitized for the computers. The microphone arrays set up by the science team will reveal this pretty quickly. Have them set up a computerized frequency transponder system to stretch or squeeze the sound into a human-audible range for the Linguistics sub-team to hear. Have your Tech Liaison bring John Lilly, at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, and any dolphins they can bring and keep comfortable. Dolphins might be better at sonic communication than humans, and might be useful ambassador-translators. A special case of sound is music, again invoking Close Encounters of the Third Kind {9}. As one poet {72} observed, "a single chord is a calling card and, at that, a mighty simple chord, based on universally shared mathematics. This is an old idea, going back to the Greeks and the music of the spheres. There has always been a connection between music and mathematics, which is why scientists have often been inordinately fond of music.... Science fiction argues that if music is mathematical, it must be universal. For interstellar space, don't bother with verbal messages; send a fugue. To be safe, send both," and indeed Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched in 1977 carrying a digital record of miscellaneous sounds of Earth, including music. A popular joke (in NASA and SETI circles) is that the ETs land and demand "send more Chuck Berry!" George Rochberg, a composer, says that "music is a secondary 'language' system whose logic is closely related to the primary alpha logic of the human body. If I'm right, then it follows that the perception of music is simply the process reversed, i.e. we listen with our bodies, with our nervous systems and their primary parallel/serial memory functions." The problem with this theory is that, while every single human society has music, then music in each culture is different. Philosophy Professor and science fiction pioneer Olaf Stapledon agrees {68}: "Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars." Observe if the ET produces patterns of sound with an object -- it might be a musical instrument. If you can, imitate its sound with a harmonica, guitar, violin, or any other instrument that you happen to have on hand and with which you are familiar. But don't expect full emotional communication. As Victor Zuckercandl says in The Sense of Music: "We can translate from any language into any other language; yet the mere idea of translating, say, Chinese music into the Western tonal idiom is obvious nonsense." Music, like primary language, is arbitrary, in the sense of our section on "Arbitrary is as Arbitrary Does." In the novella "The Moon Moth" {53} the protagonist reads in the Journal of Universal Anthropology the following: "The population of the Titanic littoral is highly individualistic, possibly in response to a bountiful environment which puts no premium upon group activity. The language, expressing this trait, expresses the individual's mood, his emotional attitude towards a given situation. Factual information is regarded as a secondary concomitant. Moreover, the language is sung, characteristically to the accompaniment of a small instrument. As a result, there is great difficulty in ascertaining fact from a native of Fan, or the forbidden city of Zundar. One will be regaled with elegant arias and demonstrations of astonishing virtuousity upon one or another of the numerous musical instruments. The visitor to this fascinating world, unless he cares to be treated with the most consummate contempt, must therefore learn to express himself after the approved local fashion." This includes instruments such as: "stimic: three flute-like tubes equipped with plungers. Thumb and forefinger squeeze a bag to force air across the mouth-pieces; the second, third, and fourth little fingers manipulate the slide. The stimic is an instrument well-adapted to the sentiments of cool withdrawal, or even disapproval. Krodatch: a small square sound-box strung with resined gut. The musician scratches the strings with his fingernail, or strokes them with his fingertips, to produce a variety of quietly formal sounds. The krodatch is also used as an instrument of insult." Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS (c) Smell. Smell is the most ancient and the most emotionally evocative sense you have. When you sniff an odor, molecules of the scent are absorbed by the mucous membrane of the fatty, moist, yellow tissue in your nasal cavity, behind the bridge of your nose, and stimulating microscopic cilia on special olfactory nerve cells which are replaced every month or so. The nerve cells send messages to your brain. In fact, the "olfactory bulb" in the brains of fishes is the evolutionary ancestor of your entire cerebrum -- the thinking part of your brain. You have, according to the popular "stereochemical" theory of J. E. Amoore (first suggested by the poet Lucretius in about 60 B.C.!), seven basic smell-receptors (shaped and sensitive molecules) on those nerve-cilia, and therefore everything you smell is a combination of seven basic smells. They are: pepperminty, floral, ethereal (alcohol, or pears), musky, camphoraceous (moth balls), pungent (vinegar) and putrid (rotten eggs). Something smells pepperminty to you if it has wedge-shaped molecules that fit into a V-shaped receptor site on your nerve cilia, and floral if it has a molecule shaped like a disk with a straight handle, which fits into a bowl-and-groove-shaped receptor site. Putrid molecules are negatively charged, and couple to positively charged receptors; while pungent molecules have a positive charge that links to a negatively charged receptor. In all likelihood, the ET will have a completely different set of basic smells. Your receptors are locks, designed to fit particular key molecules. The ET will have different locks and different keys. Still, it might be informative to present a series of smells, which are basic to you, to the ET, and to smell if it replies with any smells that you can recognize. On the down side, you might be poisoning the ET. A specially important type of smell communication is that of "pheromones" -- from the Greek words pherein (to carry), and horman (to excite). Precise scent molecules trigger some creatures to ovulate, to courtship behavior, to taking a dominant or submissive role, to mark territory, to identify family, to designate egg-laying places, or to make a trail back to home. Pheromones are important to insects and to mammals. Martha McClintock demonstrated that a group of women living together synchronize their menstrual cycles because of some pheromone in their sweat. One way of telling if the ET has evolved as a smell-priority creature is where its smell receptors are located. If the ET, for instance, is snake-like, with a head close to the ground, it is more likely to smell odors that cling to the ground. If the ET has feathery antennae, like moths or butterflies, it may have the super-sensitive pheromone receptors on these antennae. If the ET has four or six legs, and a head dropping close to the ground, then it may be somewhat like a bloodhound or truffle-hunting pig. But this is only a hint, not a certainty. After all, how can tell whether or not the ET is smelling with its feet? Well, maybe if it wears no shoes.... The chemistry and biochemistry experts on the Science Team have been running samples of exhaled and secreted gas and liquid from the ET through Mass Spectrometers and other analysis devices. They are coding that data for the computer system, and will now tell you if the molecular output from the ET is varying quickly over time. If the ET is like terrestrial insects in its use of pheromones and other chemicals as a medium of communication, we need to track the changes in smell, and be able to make stinky signals in return. Have the chemical synthesis sub-team make stocks of every chemical that the ET produces, and set up a smell-o-vision gadget that will puff software-controlled coded smells at the the ET. Call in the top perfume designers and "noses" from London, New York, Tokyo, and Paris, just to be sure. Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS (d) Taste. Follow the instructions for Smell, except based on samples from the surface of whatever part of the ET seems involved, such as mouth (as in people), antennae (as in insects), or carapace (as in lobsters). Pay attention to your master chef, but don't feed anything to the ET yet, for fear of poisoning. Our word taste comes from the Middle English tasten (to sample, touch, examine), which in turn derives from the Latin taxare (to sharply touch). Taste is important to mamals, who evolve a love for the flavor of their mother's milk; and later to tell good food from bad. Observe carefully to see if, how, when, and in what context the ETs eat, drink, and touch objects to the organs of eating and/or drinking. Observe whether they eat what appears to meat, or plant matter -- taste has different significance for hunting carnivores than for grazing herbivores. You have roughly 10,000 tastebuds on your tongue, as first noted by Gerg Meissner and Rudolf Wagner in the last century, with specific areas of your tongue devoted to the four basic tastes -- sweet (tip), bitter (back), sour, and salty. Your taste of food and drink is really a combination of taste and smell. The ETs may be cannibals, by the way, in the sense of eating each other, but unlike shlocky sci-fi movies, they will not want to eat humans. We are guaranteed to be extremely poisonous to them, if they have anything like an immune system responsive to foreign proteins. For a dissenting view, however, see Anything You Can Do.{69} Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS (e) Touch. The ET may communicate through vibrations, squeezes, scratchings, or other tactile modalities. We are most sensitive to touch on certain hairless areas of skin: fingertips, palm, foot sole, tongue, nipple, and sexual organs. Many mammals are most sensitive with whiskers near the mouth. Look for what body parts the ET uses to delicately touch objects in its surrounding environment. These are probably among the more touch-sensitive places on its body. There may be social barriers to touch in specific places or in particular contexts. You don't want to accidently be guilty of extraterrestrial sexual harassment! The legal phrase, noli me tangere, means "don't interfere", but literally means "don't touch me." Your sense of touch comes from tiny encapsulated nerves called Meissner's corpuscles, buried between the top layer of skin (epidermis) and the second layer (dermis). You have almost 10,000 such touch nerves on each square inch of fingertip. You also have deep pressure-touch sensors, called Pacinian corpuscles, near joints, and in mammary glands and genitals, that signal to your brain what is pressing on your body, how your organs are shifting position, and what position your limbs, fingers, and toes are in (proprioception). These Pacinian corpuscles are also sensitive to vibration. In addition, you have Merkel's disks (which sense and signal about steady, constant pressure below the surface of your skin) and Ruffini endings, deep beneath skin, which respond to presure, and special nerves for sensing temperature, and the sensitivity to touch at the base (follicle) of your hairs. Maybe, but not surely, the ET has touch sensors of similar kinds. Observe carefully if the ET has hairs, Vibrissae (stiff cat-like whiskers), snouts, bristles, cerci (vibration-sensors on the bellies of cockroaches), antennae, tongues, bills, fingers, tentacles, or other parts likely to be touch-related. Look for how the ETs (if there are more than one) touch each other. Try to note which touches look like caressing, kissing, biting, sucking, scratching, patting, nudging, massaging, kneading, fumbling, wiping, tickling, fondling, grooming, brushing, stroking, prodding, banging, hugging, or licking. You may be way off base, but photograph, sketch, video, or note in writing whatever you can about such behaviors. If the ET reaches out to touch you, be very careful not to jerk away or to over-react. Try to touch it back in the same way. Gather some musicians (who can make precise motions with fingers or tongues), safecrackers (with ultrasensitive fingertips), chiropractors (good at bendings, twistings, pullings, and squeezing), doctors, chiropodists, manicurists, barbers, and masseuses. And have the Science Team set up tactile-transponders for computer input-ouput, that can translate touch into software and the reverse. Return to "Me Human, You Alien" TABLE OF CONTENTS (f) Posture. The ET may communicate by wiggling its limbs or other body parts in a visual language. Your Science Team has been watching, recording, and computerizing its motions. Enhance that analysis with a top American Sign Language expert, Marcel Marceau or other available master Mime, modern dancers {89}, dance instructors, choreographers, semaphore signallers, and Labanotation folks who can translate choreography into computer notation and vice versa. Tell Robin Williams that you've got a sequel to "Mork and Mindy" in production, and fly him here. There are conventionalized symbolic gestures to convey narration and emotion in the dances of Indonesia, Indo-China, Korea, China, and Japan. "It would seem as if kinesthesia, or the sensing of muscular movement, although arising before language, should be made more highly conscious by linguistic use of imaginary space and metaphorical images of motion," says Whorf {45} (p.155). "Kinesthesia is marked in two facets of European culture: art and sport. European sculpture ... is strongly kinesthetic, conveying great sense of the body's motions; European painting likewise. The dance in our culture expresses delight in motion rather than symbolism or ceremonial, and our music is greatly influenced by our dance forms. Our sports are strongly imbued with the element of the 'poetry of motion.' Hopi [Native American] races and games seem to emphasize rather the virtues of endurance and sustained intensity. Hopi dancing is highly symbolic and is performed with great intensity and earnestness, but has not much movement or swing." Watch carefully for signs that the ET sometimes moves in dancelike or gamelike ways, but expect that the differences in the nature of those |
