Mindless indeed

Disco. club owner Bruce Chapman is upset. He saw a report from Saturday which claimed that the UN had someone in charge of meeting aliens if they landed. Two days later, he therefore launched a breathless critique of the obviously Darwinian influence on this decision, a blog post he titled Evidence of Mindless Evolution at the U.N.:

the U.N. now wants to establish a liaison with these unknown creatures, even if there is no evidence for their existence at all--just speculation. A Malaysian astrophysicist is to be the first ambassador of the world to little green men on Mars, or wherever they turn out to be.

It is all put forth in complete seriousness.

Except, it isn't. When a reporter contacted the supposed "take me to your" leader, she told a reporter "It sounds really cool but I have to deny it." In other words, it wasn't put forward by the UN at all, let alone in complete seriousness. She's giving a talk on near earth objects – asteroids and such that could some day cause massive destruction on earth. She's talking about Phil Plait's sort of thing, not little green men.

The only mindless things here are, as always, the London Sunday Times, the Australian, and the Discovery Institute.

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Besides, I paid to become the Earth Ambassador years ago, to this guy who assured me he worked for the UN. I'm still waiting for the official certificate, but I'm sure that's just an administrative oversight.