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Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Letter to Danie Krugel

I have just sent Danie Krugel the following email:

Greetings Danie

My name is Owen Swart, and I represent an organisation called the USS Dauntless. We are a Star Trek fan club based in Johannesburg, but we have members and affiliates in a number of countries around the world.

The USS Dauntless is interested in pursuing social and scientific goals that will bring society closer to the utopian ideal as envisioned by Gene Roddenberry and depicted in the Star Trek television series and feature films. It's therefore very exciting to us whenever a new technology is developed that may help us with our mission.

As you may be aware, in Star Trek the characters employ an array of futuristic technologies in their mission of discovery and exploration. One of those technologies is a portable scanning device called a Tricorder.

The Tricorder has a variety of scanning capabilities, suitable for any number of possible applications. One of the applications it has is to track and locate specific individuals over long distances by searching for their DNA.

Based on our analysis of media reports, that is precisely what your machine seems to be capable of. As a result, we are very excited at the prospect of being able to employ such a device in real life.

We would like to offer our free assistance to you in the form of a controlled, double-blind test to see if the machine works as described.

We propose that we provide you with DNA samples of a number of volunteers. After using your machine to accurately determine the locations of the individual volunteers to within a reasonable margin of error (that we can agree upon beforehand), we will know how accurate the machine is.

We ask for no remuneration for this test. It is enough for us to be involved in the process of creating such a wonderful new technology, the repercussions of which are, no doubt, as apparent to you as they are to us.

We eagerly anticipate your response.

Yours in Trek.

Captain Owen Swart
Commanding Officer
USS Dauntless NCC-74214

I also sent off some press releases. We'll see if he responds.

3 comments:

  1. I would be very surprised if you receive a response from Danie. But please keep us up to date on any developments.

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  2. Indeed, I don't expect him to respond at all. It's been almost a month since we issued the challenge and there has been nothing but radio silence.

    We're getting ready to issue our follow-up press release declaring Krugel's failure to respond.

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  3. This is brilliant! Well done indeed. I do so hope that Danie doesn't just fade into the background without being exposed, so we should all try to lure him out with this kind of challenge.

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