In message <50d7fdb0-ca28-4444-885d-44e98ade657d@y38g2000hsy.googlegroups.com>, Chris.B <chris.b@mail.dk> writes

From your stream of consciousness let's see if I can pick out and answer the questions individually:

Well, nobody is perfect. Isn't that really the point about
civilisations?

No

> We place
>such importance on appearance that anything falling outside of "the
>norm" might be rather terrifying or downright ugly to most of us.
>Hairy legs in women? Cleft lips? Thinning hair? Cross-eyed? Acne? An
>odd skin colour? Sweaty hands?

You want an answer for each of your individual problems, or all at once?

Personally I have no problem if you have hairy legs, thinning hair, odd (or even) skin colour, or sweaty hands.   Cleft lip, cross-eyed and acne might distract me for the first few minutes, until I get to know you. Sorry for that.

> Don't we all carry a heavy load of prejudices around
> with us concerning communication?

Not that I had noticed, unless of course the other person can't actually communicate.

Shouldn't we choose an intermediate language which neither of us know?

No.  There is a fundamental problem with that suggestion...

>Just to be fair to both?

There are only two of us in this newsgroup?  Gosh, you write a lot!

>How do you judge the format and quality of a message from space?

Whether or not I can detect and decode it.

> By?
>your own standards of educated, middle class, 21st century English,
>competent punctuation, broad vocabulary and decent spelling?

No, I'd expect an encoded prime number sequence or similar first.

Are these the same standards you apply to dolphins and whales?

No.  They haven't mastered communication via radio waves yet, so I'll let them off the prime numbers for now.

Can you
speak dolphin?

Err, no.  Was that rhetorical?

> It can't just be all about  fishing, racing against
>ships and sex. Can it?

No. Racing against ships probably isn't a significant conversation.

> Do dolphins have local accents and hierarchy?

Yes

Upstream boy and downstream girl?

River dolphins only.

Shouldn't we know by now?

No

>  It might
>be important. Who knows what vital secrets they hold?

"So long and thanks for all the fish"

Hope that helped!