Curveball, Futurist Edition

More blockquoting from Edge. This time, I give you Jaron Lanier, who looks a bit like a Psychlo:

If all this sounds a little too fantastic or obscure, here's another approach to the same idea using more familiar reference points. Imagine a means of expression that is a cross between the three great new art forms of the 20th century: jazz improvisation, computer programming, and cinema. Suppose you could improvise anything that could be seen in a movie with the speed and facility of a jazz improviser. What would that mean for the sense of connection between you and someone you love?

It would mean that we were both awesome. There are plenty more details if you follow the link, but honestly: what a beautiful idea.

On a less reverent note, that Wikipedia article on Psychlos (the alien villains from Battlefield Earth) explains that (according to L. Ron Hubbard) "because of their extra digit, the Psychlos naturally developed a 'base 11' positional notation system, the mathematics of which is the basis of the teleportation technology that enabled them to dominate the galaxy." Um. Besides being ridiculous on its face and mathematically idiotic – base 11, base 10, who cares, it's just notation, and even if it does have some effect on the development of mathematics, that effect would undoubtedly shrink to nothing by the time a culture came up with the technology necessary for teleportation — this premise fails to take into account the fact that polydactyly — extra fingers or toes — is actually a genetically dominant trait in humans. So if working "naturally" in base 11 really did translate into reproductive success — which is precisely Hubbard's claim, at least according to Wikipedia — then polydactyl humans should be everywhere. Not just because their genes would own the pool, but because they could fucking teleport.

Further Wiki probes reveal that the Amish have higher rates of polydactyly than other groups, which I suppose I could have guessed. This immediately suggests an idea for what would be an all-time classic sci-fi movie — one that would not only rake in billions at the box office but finally end the brutal war between Scientologists and the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Not an action movie — an action-at-a-distance movie.

(Wamp wamp.)