Chiefsplanet and communications from beyond.

[Rain Man]

Okay, let's get the awkward part out of the way first. Other than perhaps this lurker - http://www.chiefsplanet.com/bb/member.php?u=1041 - we're all mortals. Hopefully we'll all live long and happy lives, but at some point all of us are going to make one final bounce on the diving board of life, leap off, and jackknife our way to an ancestry.com entry.

Conventional wisdom says that we'll also stop posting on Chiefsplanet at that point, and probably cease all other communications as well. But is that really necessary? And if not, we could make history by establishing communications.

Of course, we hear occasionally about communications from beyond the grave via seances, ghosts, ouija boards, and that sort of thing. But the thing that strikes me as futile is that we can never be sure if those things are real or a scam or just a figment of our imagination. And the reason we can't be sure is that we don't plan ahead of time. We don't have pre-arranged signals that can't be faked or misunderstood.

I'd like for us to think about the practicalities of communicating from beyond the grave. How can a person do it, and how can a person do it in a way that can't be faked? Then let's all agree to do it when we die, so that still-living Chiefsplanet members can confirm it and perhaps even communicate. It becomes a win-win in that case, because the dead member can still post and the live members can be famous for establishing such a communication.

So let's brainstorm some ways to communicate from beyond the grave, and agree to do it. I would propose the following ground rules.

1. We don't know what the limitations might be, so we'll need multiple options. What if you can't do telekenesis, or you can't write on the fog in mirrors? We need to come up with ways that will work regardless of the dead person's abilities to manipulate objects in the plane of the living. These don't have to Chiefsplanet specific, of course. Maybe it would involve Morse Code using the light on top of the Eiffel Tower, for example.

2. We need to come up with ideas that cannot be faked. Suggestions of posting in a game thread, for example, can easily be faked by a Chiefsplanet member, and as such, could never serve as irrefutable confirmation.

3. We need ideas where we can identify the person sending the message. If, for example, they can't actually communicate but can just send a signal of some sort, how will we know which Chiefsplanet member it is?

4. Ideally, of course, the ideas would involve ways to actively communicate, even if they're non-standard communications. Maybe it involves the direction that a salt shaker is facing, or the frequency with which a shadow falls across the piano player's face on Saturday Night Live. Whatever. The key is to agree beforehand so we aren't going into this blind.

5. The ideas need to be things that living Chiefsplanet members can check, and preferably where multiple Chiefsplanet members can independently check.

Okay, put your thinking caps on. What do we have?