From: mailbox@cpacker.org   
      
   On Mon, 12 Jan 2026 15:57:05 -0500, William Hyde wrote:   
      
   > Christian Weisgerber wrote:   
   >> RIP, Erich von Däniken (1935-2026), Swiss writer who became an   
   >> international bestselling author by opportunistically writing about   
   >> fringe and pseudoscience topics. He popularized the idea that early   
   >> human cultures were visited by extraterrestrials who helped build   
   >> monumental works and became revered as gods; a concept that was picked   
   >> up numerous times by science fiction writers.   
   >>   
   > I believe that SF writers got there first.  But in those stories the   
   > aliens were more clever, passing on information rather than building   
   > useless objects.   
   >   
   > Still, given how stupid we are, perhaps aliens would also be dumb enough   
   > to think:   
   >   
   > "We need to help these poor people! Gimme three pyramids, stat!"   
   >   
   > William Hyde   
      
      
   Raise your hand if you're old enough to remember an eerily   
   similar controversy a generation earlier: "Worlds in Collision"   
   by Immanuel Velikovsky. Compare and contrast.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)