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| Personal background |
Hey, all. I'm a 53 year old retired geologist/petroleum engineer from Bakersfield, California. I know..."Retired at 53????"...well, I am because I can.
Folks often ask why I "waste electricity" cranking through work units on my various machines. Well, I tell them that I'm a "believer" and what better way to put my two bits in than to assist in the "Search." I guess I've always been enchanted with outer space and the stars. At one point I wanted to be an astronomer, but then I realized that there wasn't much money in it, so I looked for other occupations. I can remember watching the original episodes of "Star Trek" and (God help me) "Lost in Space" as a kid. I remember watching Apollo 8 circle the moon for the first time at Christmas so long ago, and I remember when the "Eagle" landed. I remember when the first shuttle took off, and I remember when "Challenger" exploded and "Columbia" broke up on re-entry. I would love to take a trip to the International Space Station, but alas, that's probably one thing that I won't get to do.
Oh well. At least I can crank through work units! :-)
Oh, one other question I'm always asked is "What does your 'handle' mean?"... Well, you figure it out. Pb - think periodic table of elements... Phut - How do you pronounce the "ph" phonetically? Get it Pb Phut?? :-) Knew you'd figure it out. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
I firmly believe that "we are not alone" and that we've been visited by ET's. I've always thought that the SETI project was great, and before SETI@home, there was not really any concrete way I could express my support. When I first heard about SETI@ home, I thought it was a brilliant idea. Why not put all that latent computing power in the public domain to work. The internet facilitated it, and as soon as I found out about it, I joined the project.
I suppose the rational part of my mind knows that finding ET intelligence is a long shot, given the vast expanses of the universe (Segan's "billions and billions of stars") but we'll never know unless we try. I find it the utmost in conceit to think that the human race is the only intelligent life in the universe. I believe that my higher power is smarter than to put all his (her?) eggs in one basket. It is just up to us to find each other. I would hope that any contact would be friendly, but knowing the human race, we'd probably be the ones to draw first blood. We still have some growing to do in that area, I'm afraid.
I'm not sure that we should send out a beacon. You really never know what kind of unsavory elements you might bring in, but I think a passive search is well deserved and well served.
I for one intend to continue in the search for as long as it takes. |
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