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| Personal background |
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At a approximately 09:47:54 AM EST on March 21st, 2003 I was disturbed by my morning nap in my marginally comfortable office chair by one of my subordinates. He handed me the Early Morning Computer Usage Assessment Report, or EMCUAR (pronounced em-quar), with several line items highlighted with a yellow marker revealing that processor usage had maxed out on several of our Primate Experimentation Stations, or PESs, each of which is equipt with a more or less low power IBM compatible computer.
I thumbed through all 3 pages of the report, idly, before reaching for my tea, which had by now cooled to a lukewarm 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Interrupted in that process by a cough from my subordinate, I hastily gave him an uncommittal glance and rose out of my chair suddenly. He was right, this was important, so without dwelling further on his minor interruption into my morning nap time, I said, "Let's go".
We walked out of my office and down the corridor to the closest PES, station #321,051, of those highlighted in the report. The station was empty, aside from a few banana peels. "Play the recording", I said. My subordinate opened up Windows Media Player and attempted to open the last recording. What we then saw on the screen was normal enough. One of our experimental primates, a monkey, was seated at the station, with his back to the camera and we could see clearly what was going on on the screen. The monkey had just logged into Windows and was began to play around with the desktop icons. After three to four minutes of this, my patience wore thin and I asked my subordinate if he would please fast forward the recording. He did so and stopped just as we could see some kind of change in activity.
What we saw was surprising. The monkey had opened up a web browser and the Google home page was presently on the screen, as is it customary to make Google your home page in our compound. We load the machines that way after periodic wiping. [continued at http://www.dpds.net/seti.html] |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I suppose extraterrestrial life does exist, but I rarely give it much thought. I typically do not have time for such ponderings, which in all likelihood will turn out to be purely academic, and as such I have not considered any benefits or dangers. I do not have much faith that the discovery will occur any time soon.
I suppose humans should transmit a beacon, but if they do, they may want to consider including some monkey information in the light what I related above.
Well I suppose I could say that, I, in my capacity as Chief Laboratory Manager, CLM, run SETI@home inadvertently, as a by-product of other research. I could terminate our involvement with SETI, but I choose not to, since the monkeys do seem to enjoy watching the screens from time to time. |
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