Wright wants you to love the companion cube, save SETI

14 Comments by Justin McElroy Jul 14th 2008 8:45PM
Filed under: Culture

This isn't so much a news post as it is a 129-word, one pic reminder of why we love Will Wright so very, very much. Reason 1: He made (is still making?) Spore, a game that's so whimsically flexible that everyone's favorite three-dimensional friend, the Weighted Companion Cube, can be recreated fairly faithfully.

For reason two, you're going to have to squint a bit at Wright's shirt ... yeah, that's right, "SAVE SETI AT ARECIBO." Will Wright isn't afraid to take on the tough issues, mister, like the effort to convince Congress to continue to fund Arecibo Observatory and our continuing search for life beyond earth. We don't know what kind of nerd cred card you were thinking about playing today reader, but don't bother. It's already done been trumped.

Tags: ea, maxis, will-wright

(Page 1) Reader Comments

Josh: Jul 14th 2008; 8:53PM

I won't pretend to know much about the situation, but why fund the search for extraterrestrial life that may not exist (or even matter if it does exist), when we have plenty of other problems to deal with on out own planet?

Josh: Jul 14th 2008; 8:58PM

*our

But I guess you figured that out. =/

Saria the Cat: Jul 14th 2008; 9:08PM

Well, the search for alien life may seem superfluous, but any support given to projects like SETI only help publicize the existence of it and other projects which actually do directly benefit mankind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects
Besides, it could be that the aliens have the cure to every disease and the answer to the meaning of life, and all we have to do is get in touch with them!

Josh: Jul 24th 2008; 12:29AM

Instead of promoting SETI to maybe kind of promote other distributed computing projects, we should just promote those other ones, like Folding@home, directly.

And if an alien civilization was so technologically advanced that they could basically defeat mortality, as you explained, why would they ever decide to give that technology to another civilization and risk a war with another newly immortal species?

Besides that, there's also the large probability that they themselves could be hostile, like so many of the species on our planet are.

In short, SETI, and governmental funding of SETI, is just a waste of time, effort, and energy.

Autopsy15: Jul 14th 2008; 8:56PM

Hmm. I counted 130.

Autopsy15: Jul 14th 2008; 8:57PM

I counted 130.

Autopsy15: Jul 14th 2008; 8:57PM

Gaa! Fucking comment system!

Jon: Jul 14th 2008; 9:00PM

Maybe if he hadn't donated all that money to Rudy Giuliani's campaign, he'd be able to help save SETI.

SovietSpartan: Jul 14th 2008; 9:33PM

Arecibo is going down guys, I'm glad that Will Wright still believes in Mulder. Congress is too much under the influence of the Syndicate.

Auhim: Jul 14th 2008; 9:39PM

I'm friends with the creator of that companion cube. It's pretty amazing. Yup.

Spiza: Jul 14th 2008; 9:44PM

But wouldn't we rather want to piss money away into socialist programs?

Patrick: Jul 14th 2008; 10:01PM

Boo to you!

Charlie_Six: Jul 15th 2008; 1:46AM

SETI at Arecibo... wasn't that place featured in Jodie Foster's Contact movie?

"Shoulda sent.. a poet!"

twocows: Jul 17th 2008; 5:43AM

Will Wright is so seriously awesome. I spent a good three or four minutes trying to come up with the words to describe just how awesome he is so I could comment on this, but they simply didn't come to mind. I suppose this will have to do.

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