A SIMPLE UFO DIAGNOSTIC (C)1996 Alan M. Schwartz Vacuum tube circuitry of the 1930s looked nothing like what came before, namely mechanical linkages, pneumatics, hydraulics, and steam. Resistors, inductors, transformers, capacitors, a wired chassis, and all those glowing glass tubes with their complex innards were as alien a sight as chicken innards spread for augury. A pre-adolescent Richard Feynman could diagnose and repair the things with a big screwdriver and some homemade equipment. Transistor circuitry of the 1950s looked nothing like what came before. Circuit boards with their metal traces, myriad tiny components, and all those little metal top hats perched on three wire legs were passing strange and impossibly complex compared to the simplicity of insulated wires. A superheterodyne FM radio circuit required a graduate degree to trace. Integrated circuitry of the 1990s looked nothing like what came before. Massive multi-layer circuit boards with their parallel rivulets of copper traces and plated vias connect huge metal- legged caterpillars of Very Large Integrated Scale Circuitry, and zero insertion force surface mounted microprocessors holding millions of transistor gates on square centimeters of silicon real estate. The motherboard is augmented by a forest of subsidiary circuit boards and plug-ins. A chip fabrication facility can run $2-3 billion dollars and evolve from ribbon cutting ceremony to obsolescence in seven years. Texas Instruments has announced (possibly in the manner of IBM vaporware) a multi-processor motherboard-on-a-chip. Amdahl ate its corporate self from the toes upward trying to achieve wafer- scale integrated circuitry. If TI pulls it off, Third Millennium computers will have wholly unanticipated innards and abilities (and Microsoft programming which still demands something better). The Wright Brothers' plane did not look like a bird, a Cessna does not look like anything from Wilbur and Orville, and stealth technology looks stranger still to the casual eyeball. Let us not forget autogyros and helicopters. Why do UFOs and their innards invariably look like a cheap 1950s science fiction theatre props? It is because they are the fabrications of local little minds lost within the smothering embrace of current culture. Said spacefaring vessels of advanced outworlder cultures feature right angles and primitive conic sections as structure, round lights, and either circular or bilateral symmetry - right out of third grade art class or high school mechanical drawing. Even your late model car has largely abandoned filament illumination in favor of light emitting diodes, electroluminescent panels, and other more cost effective technologies. Look at your computer. The little lights are rectangular. The anatomical structure of putative UFO occupants is similarly hackneyed and formulaic: Bald, high forehead, large eyes, tiny nose, weak chin, head disproportionately large compared to the skinny body... look at an infant. The human body is a collection of evolutionary compromises and coincidences which is nearing phenotypic meltdown. Almost 50% of all US births are by Caesarean section. Almost 100% of all people require some degree of medical intervention - from eyeglasses to orthodonture to behavioral medication - to return to "normal" function. An outworlder would no more look like a human than its transportation would resemble a pie tin. Every biologically advanced civilization, we and they, will take a serious hand in its own structural and intellectual evolution. Switch on general somatic telomerase and human lifespans surmount 500 or more years, most of them spent in the fervid delights of young adulthood (Science 279 349 (1998)). Do we as a race really need acne, hemorrhoids, smelly armpits, and male-pattern baldness? An extraterrestrial coming to visit will be frighteningly efficient in its biology - just because it can be. We wear our muscles outside our body as mechanisms, whether they are a pair of pliers, a xerox machine, or a Coca-Cola bottling plant. We wear our brains outside our heads as digital electronics, whether they are a calculator, a computer, or the whole of the Internet. National conflicts have escalated our technological abilities to impress our will to the cutting edge of our most improbable science. Gold lame, spandex, polyester... silly ray guns... and a weakness for singing oriental twin midgets wearing maillots will not characterize outworlders if and when. Their vehicles will not resemble steam calliopes, frisbees, or anything lofted by NASA, They will not come in peace for all mankind, through they may indeed come for a piece of all mankind. If a true to life extraterrestrial stops by we can be utterly certain of two simple diagnostics: Everything about it will be culturally dissonant, and it will not be submissive.