Dave on Extra-Terrestrial Intelligent Life

I generally don’t think much of Monty Python.  I don’t know why, I simply have no love for their brand of comedy.  Aside from the dead parrot sketch, it is fair to say I’ve laughed harder at funerals than I have at the “Ministry of Silly Walks”.  But in spite of this, they did come up with pearlers from time to time, even if they only took form as a one-line quote.  One example of a quote from the film The Meaning of Life, which reads, “pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space, ‘cos there’s bugger all down here on Earth”,  quite easily ranks as one of the funniest gags ever written.

And this particular quote just happens to be the basis for this very article.  Just recently, I stumbled across a video on YouTube of a rather old novelty song called, “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.”  Now, you may find yourself questioning the relevance of this song to the subject of intelligent life in outer space.   I assure you, it is entirely relevant.  You see, at some point in the history of this recording, a television broadcast of it would have been made.  The signal would have escaped the planet’s atmosphere and continued traveling onward at the speed of light in numerous directions.  The first transmission would have most probably been made between 50-70 years ago, meaning a significant number of star systems would have received the transmission by now.  Many of these systems may even harbor intelligent life.

Now, humanity has invested, perhaps squandered, a substantial number of resources into the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.  We have sent dozens of signals, probes fitted with plaques featuring nudie pictures engraved onto them, and configured the computers of millions of geeks to act as data crunchers and analyzers for all the gobbledy-gook that comes in from the cosmos.  Still, we are yet to hear a reply.  Why?

I partly believe that it is because some supposedly brilliant boffin at NASA decided a great way of informing the Klingons and the Ferengi of our existence was to send the Pioneer 10 probe out into the deepest reaches of space with some complimentary porn, which, from a fictional perspective, may explain why Alf really came here.  However, I also believe rather strongly that it was the transmission of Nazi rally footage and the aforementioned coconut song that has put intelligent life off from ever contacting us. 

It seems then, we can blame Fred Heatherton, Adolf Hitler and Merv Griffin for cutting us adrift in the great galactic community.  Vulcans will never make contact with us, because there is nothing logical about singing songs about coconuts.   And thankfully for us, the Hutts won’t either, simply because they’re in a galaxy, far, far away.