Grrl Power #377 – Club encounters of the third kind
The rooftop there would probably still have music playing, but being open air it would probably be a more reasonable volume to prevent noise complaints. I like the idea that there’s just some subwoofers pressed against the ceiling just beneath them and they’re getting muffled bass up their feet and butts. (Or try this one if you like)
What do you think the chances are of Maxima ever wearing gold lamé? It’s not zero, but it’s not very high either.
If the word “Human” sounded like the Galactic Common word for “poop smear” then we still have the option of going by Terran or Earther or even Earthican. Imagine a Star Wars like Galaxy with thousands of sapient species and thousands of different languages. Whatever your race called itself, you’d have to remember that there are like 350 different languages in which your race’s name is super rude, stupid sounding or insulting, and you have to remember an alternate version. That would extend to every individuals names too, of course. Luckily everyone in the Star Wars galaxy can understand Galactic Common, even if they can’t all speak it.
It bothers me in a lot of science fiction that most of alien races don’t have a species name, just something derived from the name of their homeworld. Vulcans are from Vulcan, Romulans are from Romulus, Ferengi are from Ferenginar. Klingons are from Kronos, so it would be legit to call them Kronans, (I would definitely watch a late night talk show hosted by Kronan O’Brien) BUT, it should be notes that prior to The Undiscovered Country, the Klingon homeworld was known as Klinzhai, and also Kling, so they only get half credit for that. (The writer for the movie probably had the same issue that I do and was just like “Nope, changing that.”) Star Wars is better about giving races names separate from their homeworld. Wookies are from Kashyyyk, but Mandalorians are still from Mandalore. It really depends on the ‘Verse though. The Star Control games* were pretty good about it. The Arilou Lalee’lay’s homeworld is Falayalaralfali, the Chenjesu were from Procyon, the Clairconctlar from Enkidu, the Druuge from Zeta Persei 1. It’s possible they were neighbors of the guys from Omicron Persei 8. (Known as Omicronians BTW.)
*Star Control II is one of my favorite games of all times BTW. That link is to a 100% legit free version of the game with an amazing soundtrack done by the community. Take heed this is a seriously old school game so if you decide to play it, it might not be the worst idea to use a walk-through or a FAQ of some kind since you can totally hose yourself many hours into the game and not realize it till many hours later.
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
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so all sydny remberd was scales how about that neck to head ratio that’s got to narrow it down a bit
Thaaaats Raaaaaaacist!
Speciesist.
Man, I *hope* there’s Fraggles!
Ditto! I am so for canon Fraggles in this world, you have no idea.
would bow fraggles be good enough cannons underground are baaaaad idea.
What about fraggle cannons?
I’m sure you could whip up a decent cannon that’s modified to use Fraggles as ammo, Doctor. You already have the facilities available to do so. It would probably work better as a Ground Combat weapon, rather than from your orbital platform.
Don’t put Star Control II out in the open like that, you’ll spoil modern games for generations of gamers that don’t know what they missed.
I assume you guys are aware there is a new Star Control in development as we speak? :)
I don’t think it’s in development yet, the email I got talked about “we acquired rights to SC, help us shape SC3” (unless I remember it wrong, it’s been few weeks already and I deleted it).
Wouldn’t it be SC4? SC3 came out years ago…. and it kinda tied up all the loose ends and finished the series…..
It did suck compared to SC2, sucked very hard.. but was still fun…
***** You want to talk about flowers********
AHH! Do not mention SC3, or it shall be *dancing*.
I loved SC3, BUT it was the only game of the 3 I ever played. Many of the races told of prior events from the first 2 games, and I enjoyed the lore immensely.
Hopefully you managed to get your hands on the free version of Star Control 2. The Ur Quan Masters simply destroys that so-called third game in virtually every way.
It’s also the one that even the creators would like to erase from existence, thus ‘Star Control 3: The Not Sucky Edition’ as opposed to a number 4. Beyond that, the less said about that abomination, the better. *cringes on the animatronic Syreen*
You are right. I dug up the Stardock e-mail from the dustbin and it talked a lot about SC2, so I just assumed they incremented the version by 1. Neither SC3 or SC4 was mentioned by version number anywhere. Let’s stay with “new SC version”.
If the new Star Control will turn out the way Masters of Orion III turned out in comparison to MoO II, that is not necessarily a good thing.
Since posting a reply with Javascript disabled succeeds but posts it as an unrelated comment without any warning, here’s a repost so people can actually find this…
I love Sydney’s shirt. I must get one like it.
what if she just said demons are alien and assuming the angelic counterpart would be classified simerly then what the hell does she mean by human alien and OTHER???
Non-human Sapient Earth-dwellers? Such as TEH MOLEPEOPLE!
Those are the Sasquatch and their alpine cousins, the Yeti. For known sentient Earth-dwellers, look at the whales/dolphins and cetaceans.
Oops. Cetaceans are whales and dolphins. I meant cephalopods, which are squids, cuttlefish and octopuses.
Octopodes are going to be dead easy to uplift. We can probably get most of the way there simply by increasing their lifespan.
Actually not true. Since Octopus males die after sex, and females die after giving birth. Scientific experiments to prevent that led the octopuses getting severe depression where they starved themselves to death.
This is true for all Cephalopods really. So not as simple as increasing their life span. Since it’s not the life span that scientists have problems with. For males it’s loss of virginity = death, and females = death after eggs hatch [or when those parts are fixed. Death by severe untreatable depression in both.]
Might have something to do with the male octopuses ripping off there own genitalia to impregnate the female octopus?
What better way to keep Octopodes from taking over… genetically dial back the sentience and require breeding to kill the parents before they can pass on what they have learned.
Until they develop telepathy and mom teaches all the young in the egg …
Nemrog, not entirely true, evolution has kicked in with regards to at least one species in the Mediterranean. The males didn’t die after sex to begin with, and the females died after watching their eggs and starving to death doing so. The new shift is that the males have started teaching the young they come across, where as they were not cooperative before and kept larger ranges that were their own territory.
To the list of Terran non-humans that are possibly sapient (not sentient, those are a dime a hundred) you should add:
* All species of great apes
* All three species of elephant
* Several species of corvids (crows, ravens, etc.)
* Several species of psittacines (parrots)
Basically any species that makes tools deserves a look.
Already answered in fine print along the bottom of the comic.
Already answered in fine print along the bottom of the comic.
My apologies for the double reply, I think I double-tapped the Submit button.
Well, the Gargoyles Universe had three sapient species native to Earth (gargoyles, humans, and Oberon’s Children) as well as an extinct Fourth Race, and a hybrid species that could count as a fifth. DC and Marvel also have their various non-human Earth natives, IIRC.
Looks like Dave is doing the same things. Which should not be surprising for this kind of comic.
mulder would be proud
as for sapient earth life an argument can be made that some primates and dolphins and killer whales should be added to the list. some primates have learnt human sign language and dolphins and killer whales have there own primitive language that some marine biologists are starting to decode
….. Cephalopods (Octopi, etc.) have very sophisticiated communications and problem-solving skills. And certain species of bird (macaws, crows, etc.) certainly seem worthy of due consideration in this general field.
i dont know about octopi they have exceptional problem solving but their retention is negligible give one the the problem every day and it needs to work out the problem from scratch each time.
as for birds i got no clue
Birds do show genuine use of memory (learning, retention, recall). The crows and ravens used in these kinds of experiments definitely remember at least some of what they did earlier; when exposed to the same task that the bird spent a few minutes solving last time, crows will often just go straight to the solution they came up with last time. When a male parrot or lyrebird (among others) is calling out all those distinct sounds, he is showing the near-by females how diverse a territory they have and how much of it he remembers. Chicks from him will be smarter, which female birds like for some reason.
One thing that’s been observed is that the “smart” animals tend to have a large brain compared to their total body mass. I watched a program where they were using this as a working hypothesis and the examples they used tended to support this. For instance while a raven has a very small brain compared to a lot of other animals, it’s relative size is quite large. Ravens are one of the few birds that has shown a knack for advanced problem solving and the use of tools. They also appear to be able to teach their descendants abstract knowledge, handing down information that can help them survive unusual threats.
An experiment at a university had the scientist don a very distinct but still quite human looking mask. The scientist then used a net to capture a raven. The bird was quickly released and the scientist left the campus still wearing the mask. A few days later a man wearing the same mask caused a ruckus as just about every raven in the neighborhood turned up to drive him away. This established the fact that the mask was recognized. The next experiment was done several years later and the ravens still recognized the mask as a threat, and the interesting thing was that the young birds who weren’t even an egg when the experiment started also showed signs of recognizing the mask.
I do not remember the exact details but I think the experiment was repeated after five or even seven years with similar results. Whatever the exact details were it seems to support the idea that the raven is a bit more brainy than your average chicken.
Where the theory might break down is with for instance elephants. I have no idea what their brain weight ratio is, but as heavy as they are I have a hard time believing that it can be that high. Elephants are however one of the few animals that appears to have the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror. In one experiment they put a mirror in the elephants compound. At first there were some confusion but quite soon the elephant had realized that there were no one behind the mirror, and the mirror image did a perfect imitation of every movement. A few days later the handler painted a spot on the elephants forehead. The next time the elephant looked in the mirror it used it’s trunk to touch the painted spot on it’s own head, showing it understood that what it saw in the mirror was an image of itself.
Similar experiments has been done with dolphins and they seems very interested in their own looks.
Why am I writing this? Seriously, I’ve totally forgotten what I was trying to say here, and that dude in that other room behind the glass just keeps imitating me and never saying anything. Must be a mime…
I saw this kind of effect with a cardinal (bird, not Catholic church leader). It landed on the rolled-down window of a car and looked in the wing mirror to see itself, but it thought that this was another bird in its territory.
When the experiment was done in a gorilla enclosure in a zoo, a very young male gorilla appeared to want to play with the gorilla in the window, an adolescent female quickly recognized herself. The experimenters used a stainless steel mirror with the silver-back (they were afraid of having glass shards all over the place); he charged the other gorilla, but when he got a few meters away, he stopped and groomed himself in the mirror, clearly realizing the “other” gorilla was just himself.
In the case of the dolphins, a one-way mirror was put into an observation window in a public aquarium with a pod of trained dolphins. The dolphins appeared to very quickly realized that the other dolphins were just reflections of themselves. When a dark blue spot was put on one, he quickly went over to the mirror to see what had been done to him. He knew it was a tool for him to investigate himself.
Cardinals. A decade on, still hate them.
Starting at dawn, “WHAM!”–right into my bedroom window. About ten to fifteen minutes later, “WHAM!”–right into the window. (I presume it took most of that to regain consciousness, what with a two-story drop to the ground).
Repeated for hours. Every day. For weeks.
Cardinals don’t recognise themselves in their reflections, and they certainly don’t learn from repeatedly crashing into them.
As far as I know/figure, it’s not exactly the size of the brain, but the composition and functionality of the parts that matter, the human brain has bits not found in the average reptile brain for example, and while increased size presumably means there’s more of everything and thus more of the bits in a human brain that make us “smart”, for lack of a better word. But taking the crows then as an example, their brains are tiny compared to ours, yet they have powers of memory, learning and communication that is at least on some levels on par with our own. Because their brain has certain structures and bits in sufficient quantity/size to enable a crow to likewise be smarter than other birds who lack them.
Ergo, a bigger brain means more places to put useful brain bits, but if you have the right bits put together the right way, a small brain can house a big mind and vice versa with shoddy parts even a huge brain is no guarantee of a complex mind.
My understanding is that elephants still fit the pattern. There have been experiments to test their ability to deduce things and they passed with flying colours. For example there was an experiment where a chain was wound around their food but not fixed (the researchers wanted two elephants to pull together). All the elephants worked out how to get the food. I know that it wasn’t that many elephants they tested (the number 12 comes to mind but I may be wrong). One elephant looked at the set up and realised that he only had to hold the chain with his foot (so the other elephant did all the work). I think that it was a young one that did that so it’s possible that the other ones had stronger morals.
Crows in Japan have worked out how to use cars to crack nuts and to use zebra crossings/traffic lights to safely pick up said nut.
As for parots, look up Irene Pepperberg and Alex.
I forgot to mention that it has been shown that elephants can recognise different human languages.
My friend once sold some pastry to a raven. It flew up to the drive-through window, dropped a 2 dollar coin, waited, then when he placed a box of tim-bits, (doughnut holes) on the drive-through window it flew off with them.
The bird had seen humans hand a large shiny object, (a Canadian “twoonie” coin) in that window and receive food in return, so it mimicked it.
That is AWESOME!
Did the crow know he had change coming?
And/or did your friend keep the change?
Raven, not crow. and it flew off so no, no change.
So the friend got a tip, good for him.
I want to see the recording from the security camera at that Timmy’s! hunting on YouTube Nope, not finding it. That would be awesome.
Oscile birds are a very popular research model for vocal learning and imitation, specially zebra finches and canaries. They show also reinforcement learning. They are pretty amazing, I should say.
If a crow leans, it will teach its descendants. There have even been studies which people that have harmed them at some point.
There was an interesting about crows showing hey are smart enough to recognize cheaters and avoid them, but not smart enough to figure out why they are avoided after cheating.
As animal languges go, the “waggle dance” of bees is in biology books for decades, marked as explained. It still holds surprises for those who study it deeper.
Also bees learn the flowers they fly to. That’s why the same bee always fly to the same type of flower. (And water bees only fetch water and no nectar and so on.) Experiments in the last years even suggest the possibility that an experienced bee can show younger bees how certain flowers work. Meaning they are able to learn by observing. Which was thought to be far beyond insects before.
Elephants seem right up there on the edge of maybe being sapient.
Who is saying that cetacean language is primitive? Zoologists who study them may know when they are talking together but have no idea what is being said, other than by noticing changes in behaviour of others after the communication. Lion experts (true experts, not some circus performer) know what every group of sounds a lion makes means; they know what they various actions they make mean, when they have meaning. The same is true for people studying most primates. Cetacean experts are still in the dark. There is now was I could call cetacean language primitive.
i used the descriptor primitive because it is my understanding that there are at most only a few hundred ‘words’ and i was speaking comparatively to human languages
That’s the problem with us understanding dolphin and whale communications. We have no idea where the words start and stop, let alone a grammar, other than that some sentences seems to start with the name of the speaker. There even appears to be high-frequency “huddle” communication used by some dolphins where they can convey quite complex information at very close range.
There are only 26 letters in the english alphabet. it’s not how many units here are, it’s the complexity of their use.
And computers use ones and zeroes.
Well, this would explain a thing or two about the club scene.
The whole species name vs. homeworld name was also one of the many reasons I love the Mass Effect universe so much. Naming an alien species after their homeworld is alright if humans are referred to as terrans or earthlings but otherwise it seems like lazy writing to me.
The Jaffa refer to us as Tau’ri, which is what they call Earth.
Tau’ri or Ta’uri? From the German soundtrack, I thought it’s the latter.
That said, even being aware of it, I don’t see a problem with naming a species after their home planet, unless the home planet carries more than one intelligent species.
Also, Terran or Solan* or Solarier* might be preferable anyway, because what species in their right mind would call their home planet “dirt” or “soil”? (Yes, I know that “terra” is Latin for earth… but still, it seems a bit better.)
*: Which might only work properly while other planets within the same system are uninhabited…
In the RPG Traveller, the term for humans from here (i.e. Earth) is Solomani, which is to say men of Sol.
Tau’ri.
The word for world is forest.
H. Beam Piper had the idea that a species’ homeworld would be an additional term in their scientific name; so we’d be Homo Sapiens Sapiens Terra. There is the slight difficulty that scientific nomenclature puts the largest group first, so it really ought to be Terra Homo Sapiens Sapiens…
I think, in Piper’s defense, the Terra was placed where we put the current second sapiens, as we hadn’t added neandertalis, heidelbergensis, idaltu, etc., to the sapiens species when the Fuzzy trilogy was written. So, gen. Fuzzy; spec. Sapiens; sub. Zarathustra.
Solan, Solarier or Solomani would only work for those who actually come from the sun
Well our home world is Sol 3…
the Romans did a similar thing with naming conventions. they would name an entire group of people according to the first small village/tribe of that people they encountered. a modern comparison would be calling everyone who lived in the USA a New Yorker. don’t even get me started on the Dutch, by the way. how do we call the people from Nippon the Japanese? the Dutch are responsible for a lot of our terrible naming conventions in the English language. i can’t even repeat a lot of them because now they are widely accepted as terribly offensive.
Since we use “human” to mean having human traits, including but not limited to bipedal form, empathy, intelligence, etc, we’d probably need to present ourselves to a wider galaxy as something other than “human” ourselves. Also, a lot of peoples name for themselves translates to “the people”. China was known as the “middle kingdom”.
No reason to think Sullustrians don’t use the local version of “human” to describe themselves, and “other” for everyone else, including humans.
I think humans may have a few things to learn about reliable naming conventions. About five hundred years ago some European guy on a boat got lost and thought he landed in India. He told the people back home about these people he met. Five centuries later we are still referring to the natives of this continent as ‘Indians’ although we are now pretty darn sure that is not where he landed.
Just think. If he thought that he had landed in Korea we would have cowboy movies with people shouting “The Koreans are attacking!”
I think it was world-travelling empires in general. The British and French empires were responsible for some other equally offensive names. “Dutch” itself is a somewhat offensive name from English-speaking people who were unable to tell the difference between the Deutsche and Nederlandse peoples.
That is kind of how my country was named. A local native leader in what is now Quebec invited Jaques Cartier to come to his village (“kanata”, which was the word for village, not the name of it) which some of his party interpreted as the name of the nation “Canada”. So we are one great big village, from sea to sea to shining sea. Mind you, Kanata is one of the suburbs of our nation’s capital, Ottawa.
Dabbler looks nice, but what’s the point?
(Other than fan service.)
Sydney knows it’s not her true appearance.
((OK, I suppose she should keep up appearances when out in public.))
Does there need to be a point other than fanservice? Really? Look in your heart. You know there doesn’t need to be.
the point is that its in character for dabbler if she wasn’t doing it without a reason then it would be out of character
They are still at the club, anyone couod come uo the stairs. Also, on the roof – paparazzi helicopters?
I think she jkust wants to have a late night snack by seducing some guys.
Dabbler may be flirting with Sydney just a little here to mess with her. Our heroine did apparently drag her away from her next meal, after all.
Nah, Dabbler just left her meal to steam for a couple of hours. This will make it more tasty later in the night.
Dabbler has been using the glamour for her entire time off-base tonight (probably a standing order for her). It was only because of the “Orb of Omens” that Sydney could what Dabbler really looked like.
Huh? Were you saying anything?
Sorry for the drooling but HypnoBoobs has just been joined by HypnoFinger tracing patterns on HypnoThigh…
Shhh… Do not interrupt the hypno-finger…
Fraggles are aliens also.
(I assume your script blocker stopped this from being a response)
Fraggles are not aliens (to my knowledge anyway), they are sentient non-human lifeforms native to earth. Calling them aliens is like calling cetaceans aliens. And while we don’t have a term for “sentient earth based non-human life”, using “alien” would be a long draw.
Now if you will excuse me I will dance my cares away (toom toom) down on Fraggle rock (toom toom).
Doozers on the other hand ARE clearly aliens, are evidenced by their advanced technology.
Well, the Mandalorians named the first planet they conquered (and their culture, since they’re not a species) after their leader.
Of course, part of the reason for naming a species after their homeworld may just be to minimize the number of things the reader/viewer has to learn. Works that go overboard on alien names and such often leave readers not even remembering who’s from where, who’s who, and so on.
There is this theory that the native name for a home planet for all species will always be one of 3 possible:
Dirt
Home
Mother
add to that a few more gender pronouns and a few aquatic variations and other more alien environments
Pertinent Schlock: https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2006-08-07
Is there anything there’s not a pertinent Schlock for?
Meh, offhand I can think of one Earth culture that refers to our world based on it’s location relative to the other eight worlds in their mythological cosmology. Specifically midgard, because it’s located in the middle.
I figure that sapient aliens, regardless of species or environment, refer to themselves as “us” and the planet they live on – in contrast to other planets – as “here”.
It could be that they’re lazily assuming that, if they’re advanced enough for interstellar travel, they’ve advanced far enough to have a one world type government, removing the need for culture labels like Greek, British, etc…
And while most Mandalore they accept anyone into the culture. Anyone can be a Mandalorian.
Similarly, the Sith reluctantly accept members of other species into their culture.
The sith do everything reluctantly unless it directly benefits their plans for galactic domination.
Wouldn’t that be: unless it directly benefits their personal plans for galactic domination.
dont forget: “Or if it screws someone else over”
actually, technically, both the Sith and Mandalorians WERE alien races early on in their history. it’s just that both adopted other races into their culture and eventually died out, leaving the names stuck.
Also, the Je’daii – except, of course, the silly outsiders managed to misinterpret their teachings and fall into a ‘Dark = Evil’, “Light = Good” mindset, completely ignoring the whole ‘balance of the Force’ aspect…
Then again, so did many of the outsider-sith. The really powerful ones realised they could use both sides of the Force to commit evil. (Similarly, in “Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire” one of the more horrific ‘evil’ spells used by Necromancers is actually a form of white magic)
That’s the way it went down? I really have to read up on Mandalorians again.
Or not, since Disney decided to put decades of wokr on the EU in the trash and actually thinking that would provide more freedom to tell stories. For the first couple of movies, maybe, but after that, they’ll be just as limited by what they set up as they would have been if they had taken off after Crucible (the last big book that put the old generation on retirement).
Such as ‘Rogue One’, apparently due to tell us how the Rebels got the Death Star plans. Easy, they hired Kyle Katarn (Star Wars: Dark Forces, first level)
Disney wasn’t the first to invalidate the expanded universe. I remember seeing an image of Boba Fett taken from a comic book. The blue guy with the pointed ears certainly didn’t look like Temuera Morrison, (I had to google that).
uh.. according to the EU, the Death Star Plans actually went through the hands of like ten different rebel alliance heroes, Starkiller being one of them, Kyle being another, a Twi lek gal with a Cybernetic Lekku being a third, and so on, and so forth.
honestly, “had to get the plans to the rebels” was vastly overused previously.
Now I want a mini-series/sketch about a beleaguered Imperial agent, who keeps having to nick the Death Star plans back from the Rebels, while his superiors are accidentally and buffoonishly thwarting his attempts to keep them secure…
Final scene: the agent is in an audience with the Emperor, complaining about how little support he has had, and how the Rebels now have the plans. Palpatine reassures him – there is nothing the Rebels can do to stop them, and soon their base will be destroyed! *gestures to vid-screen of Death Star approaching Yavin* *Death Star on screen explodes*
“Erm… I don’t suppose you made a backup of those plans, by any chance?”
The next to the last to have the plans was Manny the Bothan.
And he died.
Rumor has it that Felicia Jones in Rogue One is playing Jan Ors from Dark Forces.
Ah, ok I didn’t know that.
That does raise an important question: what is the difference between demons and aliens?
Well… in Thor, the Norse and Greek Gods are aliens also :)
Are you from another planet, or another dimension, perhaps? Like “foreigner”/”extra-terrestrial”?
I would say that demons exist in this place in another plane, while aliens are from this plane, but another place.
In the “Myth Inc” series of books, ‘Demon’ was a variation on ‘Dimension’, so, basically, if they are from another planet they are ‘aliens’ if from another dimension, then they are ‘demons’
Alien basically means some one that is different, usual used in context of location ie planet, country(very crude def… don’t crucify me)
an Alien can be someone from another town, another country another planet or another plain of existence…
Extra-Terrestrials and Ultra-Terrestrials are all Aliens.
Thank you for the correction (but stand by the ‘demon-dimensional traveller’ bit)
Maybe there isn’t one: Demons are just a particular type of alien who have had dealings with Earth and its inhabitants for a very long time.
it Could even be as simple as we on earth have a concept for succubi that fits dabbler’s succubic parent-species close enough, and we label succubi as being demons, hence she lets humans refer to her as a demon rather than insist that she’s an alien because its just so much easier to let humans have their own names for things sometimes.
Qo’Nos, rather than Kronos… Also, I think the Manolorians refers specifically to the armed forced of that world, who are partially mercenary, rather than the native race – could very likely be wrong though. The confusing one is Naboo – you have the Gungans, and the… Naboo.
Star Trek always tended to treat planets like countries (America – Americans, Cardassia – Cardassians) unified government and all, although we might be referred to as “Earthlings”, or “Terrans” (see mirror universe)
Yup, knew it started with a ‘Q’ (haven’t played STO in months, well, just after the summer event, and don’t have a very good memory most times)
Personally prefer the term “Earthicans” (double quatloz if you can correctly name the series and person responsible for that name :D)
I want to say Futurama, mostly by Nixon saying,”My fellow Earthicans…” So can I haz da quatloz?
Technically, it was the head of Nixon, so only single quatloz :p (wait, is that ‘quatloz’ or ‘quatloos’? o_O)
“Quatloo” if you mean the money from the Star Trek episode The Gamesters of Triskelion. Maybe you should start spending gold pressed latinum instead?
*Hugs his Latinum tighter*
“Hands Adamas a squeegee and bucket.”
Latium is a liquid remember .
Never said it wasn’t in it’s transferable form. But I admit to always wondering why it’s “GOLD pressed” Is there a place that only takes Cobalt-pressed Latinum?
As I understand it, the latinum is one of the very few things in their universe that cannot be replicated, hence it’s use as form of currency. They pressed it into gold to make the stuff easier to handle since it meant they didn’t have to carry around the liquid in vials and jars and such. The gold was considered effectively worthless.
Limited technology.
I have a swimming pool full of latinum.
Hence the need to put it in gold containers.
HA-roooooooo! (shaking my jowels)
“Headless body of Agnu!”
Q’s Winter Wonderland is open ATM, come and get yourself a Breen dreadnought! (giant space lobster) And shoot snowmen.
So, haven’t missed out on the free ship? Will log in sometime this week
From wookiepedia.
The Mandalorians—known in Mando’a as the Mando’ade, or “Children of Mandalore”—were a nomadic group of clan-based people consisting of members from multiple species and multiple genders, all bound by a common culture.
In other words mandalorian is not name of a species it is more like a nationality much like american, canadian, mexican (I choose these as examples
because these are mostly mixed ethnicity cultures) thus it actually makes sense they share name with their home planet.
And it’s not even their home planet.
“If the word “Human” sounded like the Galactic Common word for “poop smear” then we still have the option of going by Terran or Earther or even Earthican.”
we can also name ourselves after the sun/system so there is also the name solarian after the sol system
Our sun doesn’t actually have an official name though. It’s just the Sun
Just like the moon doesn’t have an official name. It’s just the Moon
Wrong, our sun is officially called “Sol” and the moon “Luna” (where do you think the, mostly generic, term “Solar System” came from? and lunatics?)
And the ‘official’ name for Earth is ‘Terra’
Doesn’t that make us all Terra-ists?
Ok, I’m going.
with humanity’s tendency towards xenophobia and weapons of mass destruction Terra-ists may not be to far from the truth of how we would be perseved
With how the US gov acts, it’s pretty much what we are now.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the group that comes up with the official names for celestial objects, has stated that the Sun and Moon have NO OFFICIAL NAMES.
Different languages each have their own name for the thing, but there is no official, INTERNATIONAL name. At most it would be ‘the Sun’ and ‘the Moon’. Same goes for the Earth. (with a capital letter)
Luna and Sol are LATIN names. Not international names
https://earthsky.org/space/what-is-the-suns-name
Fine, unofficial names then (but then again, technically, ‘New Zealand’ isn’t the official name for the three islands East of Australia, even though that has been what people have been calling them for the last 160+ years)
You do realise, that the basis for the majority of ‘official international’ names and terms are in Latin, don’t you? Animals and plants are catalogued by their Latin names, lawyers and doctors use Latin words and terms
USE defines the meaning of words, not ‘official’ convention. If everyone’s calling our satellite Luna, then that’s its name. Nobody waits around for some bureaucracy to decide what to call it.
nope the suns official name is sol and the moon’s official name is luna
But those are still simply the Latin words for “sun” and “moon,” stemming from a time that we didn’t even conceive of the possibility that they might not be the only ones.
Those are just the latin words, not the official words
Actually they are official. What you two are referring to are Scientific designations. Then no, it’s simply “the sun”. But in english, Sol and Luna [technically Terra Luna, with earth being Terra Firma] are what our Sun and Moon were named in the popular language of early English. And became the root word for many important words today. Which use Sol and Luna as part of their words that we use today. As I0wten pointed out.
So not scientific no. But still official enough.
According to the IAU, which is the official organization that names celestial bodies, it’s just ‘the Sun’ and ‘the Moon’
With Luna and Sol being “poetical” names, like many archaic words and their poetic use.
Yet they are still used as root words for things tied to the sun and moon. And yes the IAU only calls them the sun and moon. But the words we got those from were Sol and Terra Luna. Thus since Sol and Luna are the old names for the Sun and Moon. It is still their name.
By that reasoning, the name of New York is still Nieuw-Amsterdam, because that is the older name.
if the peaple living on the moon feel like changing it they can go ahead
Human is a short hop from Humanoid, which could cover most beings that follow our rough shape.
It would follow that most planets would also have a name for themselves close to the word used to describe an upright body with two legs, two arms and one head.
Although, that is only going by English. What about the other languages on this planet? And do they have a word like Earth that also could be used to mean topsoil? It does give us a few more choices from a few other languages.
And, while I’m rambling along, what about the languages on other planets. Why do they never seem to have more than one, like ourselves. If we see a traveler from, say, the planet Bumhole, everyone on there seems to know how to speak Bum. Its never a case of “He is from the other side of the planet and can only speak Flange”
We’re extrapolating from the current situation, where variants of English have spread across Earth. Not quite the planetary language, but definitely a lingua franca. It’s entirely possible that English or some other language *will* become ‘universal’ in the near-to-moderate future.
I suspect, given the likelihood that whoever encounters us is likely to be more advanced than humanity, that THEY will be doing the naming, just as did the Romans, the Europeans and every other “advanced” culture encountering a “less advanced” one.
Germans, Indians, Japanese, etc.. etc.
I think the biggest implication is that our system of species classification needs a new upper level denoting planet of origin: Planet(or appropriate word), Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. As soon as aliens get around to being publicly revealed on earth, anyway. So, 50-100 years.
Wow, that first sentence really got away from me. Speaking of which, where did Dabbler’s sexy snacks go?
Planet of origin doesn’t really denote a species though. A human born on another planet to human parents, while being able to hold a passport for that planet is still part of the human species. Although a human colony on another planet may have some evolutionary divergence from those still living on Earth and may separate far enough to be another species.
And two separate species may come from the one planet. Think of the Naboo and Gungans in the Phantom Menace.
Asking a planet of origin could be offensive to some, just like asking a black person where they came from when they have been here for generations. A few generations back, my family are not from this country, but I was born here and this is my place of origin.
Planet of origin for the species, not the individual. We’re talking scientific classification, not nationality.
The two species is not a problem for the classification scheme, it’s the whole point of a hierarchical scheme – the existing scheme already handles every species on
EarthTerra, sapient or not.Exclusion is even more offensive – “you are not human because you were born on Snorgleff 4, not Terra”. Again, we are talking about a scientific classification and the origin of the species, not the individual.
Perhaps we could insert “Planet of Birth” in-between “Planet of Origin”-&-“Kingdom”…?
Planet of Birth would be specific to the individual. It has nothing to do with taxonomy.
As I see it anyone from earth would be known as either earthling or terran no matter what species they are. The currently dominant species would probably be known as Homo sapience, Human, человек, or 人的.
Another possible way to name us would be to state our origin as Sol 3, though that might be something more used to classify terrans that actually were born on earth or on a ship crewed by terrans from earth rather than being born on any other planet.
At least in the old expanded universe, Mandalorians are actually not as bad as it sounds. There, they are described as a semi-nomadic, family-centered people that takes in war orphans (more often than not from the war they just finished fighting) and introduces them to their culture.
The original Mandalorian people actually came from Couruscant and left after the other intelligent species (humans) started to dominate the world. By the time of the movies, these original Mandalorians are extinct, and the culture is dominated by humans, the most dominant species ikn the galaxy (most other species may or may not have a couple of colonies, but mostly stick to their original planet, while humans spread out quite far).
The planet’s name, Mandalore, means something along the lines of home of the Mandalorians (I would have to look it up to be sure), and there’s a very similarly spelled title (Mand’alore? I think,held by both Jango and Boba after he escaped from the sarlac), marking the leader of the people in times of war. Apart from that, they rarely had political leaders that unite them (leading to times when mandalorians fight on both sides of a war to the point where the only soldiers in the conflict are mandalorians).
I like these Brand names, by the way. Good thing we all have the same organs for communicating, and that there are only a couple of really important (ina busines sense) languages on the world, that spares us from finding creative translations for that kind of stuff.
Error, halo, friends let friends know if their dance slash boogie partner is of a different species. Allergic reactions aside, she is seeing him under a falsehood, so a heads up would be nice.
Not her place to reveal the lie… that’s the job of the liar
It sort of depends on if the aliens are or are not above even Anvil’s pay grade, in my opinion.
Eh, if a friend slash coworker is being lied to, I do not expect the liar to come clean. At the very least, sending her a quick text would work as a warning.
As for what anvil knows, since dabbler was easy enough showing off her eye, I imagine that she is in the know.
Agrecian: a good friend would quietly take Anvil aside and just let her know that the individual she is dancing with isn’t human, because a good friend looks out for their friends, they do not let them dance (vertically or horizontally) with just anyone
I swear I think Dabbler is constantly trying to seduce Sydney whenever she can.
Dabbler is constantly trying to seduca anyone whenever she can, nothing new here. :)
She’s a succubus, it’s probably just reflex.
The question is: what will she do if she wins? o_O
Round two.
Sex!
Round three through seventeen:
MORE SEX!!!
Get heartburn?
Does she even know how to interact with someone without playing these little games? She is a Succubus after all and her entire being is centered around sex.
She can go without. But why bother?
no she can get enough vicariously possibly but she can’t go without either her or someone near her getting it regularly as in she would starve without.
We were talking about those little games. Not the sex. The latter she obviously can’t go without. The former she could.
Aliens in an episode of Rick and Morty called our world E’arth.
So to them I guess we’re E’arthans.
“What do you think the chances are of Maxima ever wearing gold lamé?”
Would we be able to tell?
That’s the joke
(You read this inthe meme Simpsons voice)
“Ms. Dabbler, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?”
Was just going to comment on “The Graduate” pose :D
Oh heavens, you both win all my internets, I didn’t see that at first.
I like the implication Dabbler is making while about road rash, anyone notice that at the same time she is pointing/running her finger along her inner thigh…..
Ew! Someone should warn Anvil!!
Too much sexy there, Dabbler. Please, dial it back. ಠ_ಠ
And that fourth panel… ಠ_ಠ
That’s not a high-heeled shoe… ಠ__ಠ
That’s a HOOF!! ಠ____ಠ
I think you protest to much about hooves.
ಠ_ಠ
He’s got you there.
Oh yeah, and that bit about people being named after the place they’re from… it’s worth noting that some things don’t translate well. For instance, people from Japan are Japanese, but the name they have for their country isn’t Japan. It’s actually Nippon.
So, yeah, I sometimes assume things are just missed in translation.
But then you have a blatantly lazy writer with DragonBall Z, where the planet, the ruler, and the ruler’s son, are all named “Vegeta.”
Actually planets original name was Plant until saiyans under King Vegeta rebelled againts Truffs and usurped the planet and they named it after King Vegeta. For Price Vegeta it is something like Junior thing with royalty you can see in history or in american family so nothing new at there either.
Tuffles not Truffs :P
It’s not pure blatant laziness. It’s part of a running joke based on puns. (A love of puns is a recurring theme in Japanese culture.)
Saiyan is a half-word translation of Saiyajin, which literally means “vegetable people”.
Vegeta is from Vegetable (Japanese learn English in school in the same way I “learned” French as an English-speaking Canadian)
Goku was born Kakarott
Raditz, Kakarott, and Bardock (Raddish, Carrot, and Burdock. All root vegetables.)
“Gine” (their mother) was named by taking the two characters of “Negi” (spring onion) and writing them in reverse order.
“Gohan” is Japanese for Rice/Breakfast
Bulma’s name is actually Buruma. (Japanese doesn’t have an “L”)
Her sister’s name is Tights and her parents are Dr. and Mrs. Brief. Her children are Trunks and Bulla (Bura…. Bra.)(In Japanese, “N” is the only consonant which can be written without a vowel following it.)
Akira Toriyama also said that, if he’d needed to use Mrs. Brief’s first name in-story, it’d be “Panchy” (from Panty).
“Chi-chi” is Japanese for “milk” or “udders”. (Japanese words don’t make an explicit distinction between singular and plural.)
And that’s not even including Majin Buu, who was created by Babadi, who himself was the son of Bibidi. If you think about it, that’s straight from Cinderella: Bibidi-babadi-buu.
More formally, Nippon-koku (State of Japan) or Nihon-koku (because, yeah, non-English sounds) and their own name for their own nationality, Nihonjin (quite literally, as I understand it, Japan people/person) – translates/corresponds fairly well, I would have thought. Case arbitrary, because non-Latin alphabet being badly represented in a Latin alphabet.
Not that uncommon.
Germans are from Germany, but we call our country Deutschland.
Same with Allemagne in french.
blame the Dutch on Japan/Japanese. blame the Dutch on a lot of terrible country/people names in English.
Blame the English for the rest :P
Well, do remember they didn’t have phones. So you had the Portuguese pronunciation of the Indonesian pronunciation of the Chinese pronunciation of the characters for Nihon which were the same characters used in Japanese but with a different pronunciation.
Ever play Telephone?
Similar to how Fuji-san came to be wrongly known as Fujiyama then. Same characters, different pronunciation.
“Human” may only mean something rude or obnoxious in a few languages around the galaxy. However, “Belgium” is considered to one of the most obscene words in every language except on Earth. For some reason we named a rather inoffensive country that.
Face it, we are a planet with the worst possible taste. Just look at how we turned the brutal Krikkit wars into a sport!
https://www.knowqout.com/sports/galactic-origins-of-cricket/
In panel 4
Did dabbler just drew that triangle on her leg or is it some form of tattoo?
Probably reaction from her glamor .
Wow, Dave. Dabby’s dress looks great, and not just because she fills it nicely. I mean, it really looks like gold lame, with that shimmer to it. You are an excellent artist, sir. Thank you. : )
I, for one, welcome out new evil overlords, no matter how cute and entertaining they may be. Please, please, please be Dozers!
Now I have to wonder if you’re a fan of Alien Nation. The main (Human) character’s name was a homonym for “Shithead” in the Alien language.
Bravo!
:)
I was just checking thru the comments to see if anyone besides had remembered that detail from the original film!
Seems strange that this could remain a secret. I have to assume that the Galactic Government promised to kill-o-vate everyone on earth if all the world’s governments don’t allow aliens to walk among humans unhindered and invisible. I mean, you know much much grief people from regular old other countries get. How come Monarans are allowed to come in an steal waitressing jobs that regular Americans could have had?
It’s possible they don’t know.
So, like in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, it is at least possible that the whales are intelligent and in communication with some kind of extra-terrestrial intelligence? If so, it kind of makes me wonder why they didn’t send out a mayday or fight back a little more effectively when the humans started killing them.
Remember that communication can only travel at light speed. So it takes time to get a message out
Star Fleet and the Federation use FTL subspace radios, but you may be right for the whales at least. If I’m recalling correctly, they were supposed to have gone extinct in the twenty-first century, but the probe didn’t reach Earth until the twenty-third.
If you don’t mind going extended universe, the sequel novel “Probe” expands on it quite a bit and I quite enjoyed reading it back in high school.
They did.
“help! Humans are killing and eating us.”
The answer was “How do you taste?”
The whales decided not to answer.
Funny trivia relative with the “Morans” thing: A lot of Star Wars characters in Brazil had their names changed because of that. Count Dooku became Count Dookan, Captain Panaka is referred only as “captain”, Jedi Master Sifo Dias became Jedi Master Zaifo Vias. And then there is Ajunta Pall, who never got a mention in portuguese, so they didn’t needed to create a new name to him.
Count Dooku probably should have been renamed in the English version too.
…and, for modern gamers who can’t get past the old graphics, some other dedicated fans made an HD upgrade for it.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/urquanmastershd/
…strange. Why would it need Javascript enabled to reply properly when it puts the “replyto” in the URL?
Considering there seem to be a number of sites that apparently can’t display plain text without a third-party script that runs on the client (in other words, exactly what ad-blockers and script-blockers were invented to STOP), that’s relatively-speaking not bad.
I’m loving the fact that she is already so accepting of alien life on earth. To the point where she doesn’t even question the food brought by one and brings the tray of it to the roof with her.
Speaking of old game.
Mechwarrior 1, needed with dosbox. I discovered one year it is possible to break it. You can have fun getting into battles over and over again after beating the short storyline. The problem is, after you reach 500 years after the storyline. The game won’t let you repair the mechs anymore.
I’d think Human in Galactic Common = Troll, or Stupid Terrorist. Since we toss out broadcasts into Space for intelligent life to see our culture. And since a species of sufficient intelligence could pick up on the broadband signals we use to stream internet / Broadband Radio. They’d be introduced to the comment sections that you’d find in most web sites [like Youtube]. 4-chan, Ogrish, Supremeist and Terrorist websites. Websites dedicated to snuff, torture, and dead bodies [like justsickshit.com]. Which is the real reason intelligent life would want nothing to do with us. What between the chatspeak, eubonics, and massive butchery of language you find on the web, as well as G.I.F.T..
But yeah, I’ve no problems with the fic using Humans. Since the species [ours] calls itself Homo Sapiens scientifically [which somehow evolved to Human]. But Terrans, or CMATS [Crazy-Murder-Apes-That-Smell (Funny)] works to.
If aliens name us based on our broadcasts that they are now receiving, then they must think we live on planet ‘Gilligan’.
Depends. If they are receiving radio signal broadcasts, or have gotten close enough to see our current culture. And yeah Gilligan was popular, but so was Love Boat [Ocean], I Love Lucy [NY], and the Twilight Zone [???]. So there’s tons of things they’d get to see if they are only taking old transmissions rather than just Gilligan’s Island.
That just made me think. If the aliens only managed to catch Twilight Zone broadcasts they’d think our planet was out to drive Sapients insane.
Dear Dave. That’s “Wookiees”, with two ‘e’s. It kind of bothers me that Fred Perry spells it wrong, too.
I am almost 100% sure there’s a guy doing security work at ARC who uses every single moment he’s fairly sure nobody is watching him to move the camera’s so he can watch Dabbler and just sigh a happy idiot smile.
Technically, Earthican would only work if we were from “Earthica”.
The relevant suffixes I’ve found in English so far are:
-an (eg. African, latin origin)
-ian (eg. Canadian, latin origin, corruption of using -an on latin words ending in -i)
-ean (eg. European, use of -an on words ending in -e or -ea, as opposed to Europan)
-ite (eg. Muscovite, latin origin)
-ese (eg. Japanese, vulgar latin origin)
-ling (eg. Earthling, proto-germanic origin, typically “of a thing/time” rather than “of a place”, eg. seedling, yearling)
-ish (eg. British, proto-germanic origin)
-er (eg. New Yorker, proto-germanic origin)
-i (eg. Pakistani, with “al Baghdadi” being “the Baghdadian”)
Etymonline.com is very helpful in this case. For example:
https://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=%22-ish%22
Also, that’s just limiting to the stuff English borrowed. For example, in Japanese, “human” is 人間 (ningen) and “earthling” is 地球人 (Chikyūjin) from Chikyū (Earth) and -jin (person from …).
That’s how aliens describe humans back on their planet, “tastes just like Chikyūjin!”
They read To Serve Man?