May 08, 2006

• Get that old guy from Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade to hang around down in the vault. Problem solved.
• What if it's a matriarchy and they don't listen to him because he's a him?
• One word: mangina.
• This is a fantastic post. What if it's a matriarchy and they don't listen to him because he's a him? That's one of the scenarios that they are considering apparently. To wit: Their report combines dry analysis and projections worthy of sci-fi disaster films, including massive climate change and feminist corporations that disbelieve WIPP warnings because they were written by men
• I think the Egyptians also left message like that: Don't dig here! Didn't help very much. But maybe we can use empty sarcophagus, decoy tunnels full of rubble or other evasive measures? Besides, who cares? We'll be dead by then anyway.
• Well, it is Shoshone land, sacred land in fact. Perhaps someone should have consulted them for their input, oh wait, that's right, no one does that in the GovUS, that's why all that shit is poisoning Yucca Mt. to begin with. My memory is so whiteman. It's too bad NAGPRA couldn't extend much further onto other jurisdictions. Here's a new fun phrase: "Environmental Racism." New to me anyhow. That's almost as bad as "Reverse Racism." Now I unjustifiably hate all the white people involved in this conflict. Yeah, I'm a "word nazi racist."
• If we make it toxic enough, sentients in the future will get the message very quickly. Falling horribly ill and dying a day after visiting. The message is the toxicity. They will say stuff like, "Boy that place sure is toxic" in some strange tongue. By my pristine reasoning this waste needs to be toxified for longer before burial.
• Great FPP, fantastic article. Thanks.
• “To future generations, warnings about Nelson's dump may seem as impenetrable as the 600-year-old "Canterbury Tales" are for all but a few scholars today.” Uh, what? I love Chaucer. I’m not a scholar. Hyperbole much? It’s not even fully a different language, like Chinese. Oooh, no one understands Chinese. ...mmm Chinese. I’m not sure why we’re concerned as we are. I think it’s a dumb location as well. Obviously we have to put up something, but if there has been a massive global catastrophe and mankind then is too stupid and shortsighted to get the message - then screw ‘em. It means we’re just as stupid and shortsighted in the future as we are now. That said - I love the whole concept of the wipp message. I like the menacing earth works from this wipp list of markers but my fav. is probably teh forbidding blocks and the text: “ This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it! * Sending this message was impotant to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. * This place is not a place of honor...no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.” - gives me the chills, man.
• I wonder if anyone thought of going the opposite route -- instead of making it a clearly-designed structure, with lots of important symbols and numerical relationships to figure out, the whole damn thing was just buried, and made to blend in with the rest of the landscape. No-one attracted to the site, no-one bothers with it. I assume there'd be some problems in getting the 'camouflage' to last just as long, though... Whatever it is, we're so fucked. Oh, wait -- we're not!
• I'm fascinated by this problem, and if I were doing it I'd hit the message mathematically. I mean, anyone capable of drilling down to the stuff must have a rudimentary understanding of materials and forces, so probably have mathematics. Show the equations for population growth, crashing after a massive die off. I think I'd get the hint. But if that wasn't good enough, randomaction had an interesting idea. Lets make the place toxic. On the surface, salt the earth. I mean, put the really deadly stuff in the tomb, but make the land ugly enough to us biologics that you won't be able to grow food there, poison the water, make sure that anybody that does go there gets so sick that the place has a bad reputation therby preventing the release the really nasty stuff thats buried. I'm thinking lots and lots of Arsenic. And after we've done that, we make damn sure that that is it. That we have ONE place like this, for all our nuclear waste and its sufficient for everything we might want to do in the future. Rather than the current plan of opening up dozens of these little projects everytime one fills up. I still think that nuclear waste should be reprocessed and used. Anything thats going to remain hot enough to boil water for thousands of years is an energy source. Its apparently just not good enough to make a profit on compared to digging up more uranium.
• I had an interesting idea. I rock!