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| Personal background |
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My name is Rachel Ward. Online I go by Speedbump, the nickname my brother thought he was sticking me with years ago. I won that little battle though, because I actually liked it. ;p
My hobbies are cooking, reading, computers and travel.
I make a really good chocolate chip cookie that has made me popular among my co-workers. I'll read anything if I'm bored, but some of my favorite authors are Robert Heinlein, Nora Roberts (especially writing as J.D. Robb), William Shakespeare, Stephen King and of course Peter David. My favorite book is the next one, 'cause I'm a total bookaholic. I love to read so much, in fact, that I figured out a way to do it for a living. I work at The Charleston Gazette as a copy editor. That means in a nutshell that I read stories for grammar, spelling, structure and content, write headlines and lay out pages on computer.
That brings me to my next hobby: computers. My brother, Skyflight, pretty much dragged me into computers in the 80s. I learned some Basic programming, and we had a C64 that we thought kicked butt (LOL). I figured out early that I'm not a programmer, and started using my computers for other things, mostly desktop publishing and multimedia stuff. It wasn't until the mid-90s that I got into the Web and started teaching myself HTML. Now I really like Web site design, and have my latest little project at Declipsed.com, where all of my strange obsessions come together.
I also love to travel. I went to Alaska and Canada in August, and it was really great. Alaska, even for a gal from tree- and mountain-covered West Virginia, is wild and beautiful. It is a true wilderness ruled not by people, but the creatures who inhabit it. It was fascinating to see a place in which people only have the barest foothold. Everything is so big there that you can't get your mind around it; your sense of perspective just isn't prepared for the vastness of everything. If you ever get the chance, go! I've already got pictures of Greece and Turkey, and coming soon will be the Alaska pix. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I believe there is a strong possibility that extraterrestrial life exists; otherwise, I wouldn't be involved with this project. I have been fascinated by science and science fiction my whole life, and the origin for both was my love of cultural study. The very idea of there being a truly alien culture out there is just breathtaking to me. We might be getting in over our heads completely, but we can't know until we find out, and it's worth it no matter what the outcome. As far as the actual how, when and why, I have no idea. SETI seems to be a good start. I run SETI@home because I believe that the only direction humans should ever think about going in is forward. Trying to stop the clock or "go back" to some "golden time" is just hogwash. Forward is best, always. To me, SETI is a part of that whole mindset of never going back, always thinking about the future and what's out there that we haven't discovered yet. It's worth doing for that alone.
And to those who think that this might be dangerous...well of course it is. But everything in life that's really worth doing involves risk. If you didn't risk something to achieve a goal, it wouldn't mean much. If there is life out there, we will probably meet up with it someday if we survive long enough, whether we have SETI or not. I believe it would be better if we found them first. |
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