Profile: MacDurk

Personal background
Curiousity is a wondrous thing -- it has the potential to lead to things both great and unexpected. When I wanted to go beyond my backyard, I biked through Eastern Europe before the Berlin wall fell (over 14,000 miles in 3 summers). When I sought company and the continuation of our species, I married and we begat two wonderful children who are growing up in the Internet age. When I wanted to explore other aspects of life, I began to perform as various characters in community theatre. And when I listened to the taped lecture on "The Search for Intelligent Life in Space" by Dr. Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute, I had to check out the SETI@Home site and start to contribute computer time.

As for the Macintosh connection evident in my moniker, I started with a Mac SE/30 in 1986 after seeing a friend's Mac Plus, and have continued to stay with Macs at home ever since due to its superior design precepts and user-friendly interface. If Macs were cheaper, I believe the market share would expand, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon. I like to think of Macs as the Research and Development department for That Other Major Platform....
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
This universe provides a vast territory to explore, and it is bigger than all of us. It is much more interesting when explored in the company of other star travelers, whether from Here or from Out There. The SETI series of projects are fascinating, and worthy of long term investigation - participating in SETI @ Home is one way for people from many walks of life to contribute.

Given that Earth's radiotelecommunication history has been an incredibly short blip on the cosmic time scale, it may take considerable time for us to find definitive evidence of life on other planets. Should we send a targeted signal to likely candidates? Frankly, I don't think it matters at this point; if other beings are out there, they are no doubt looking for fellow civilizations as well. I agree with Dr. Carl Sagan - if we are alone in the Universe, it would be a terrible waste of Space. Let's keep looking "until our hair turns white and laughter dies in our hearts."

Regarding the BOINC endeavor, humanity has invested a lot of recent effort in developing ever-faster computing resources. The ability to harvest unused CPU cycles is an efficient way to take advantage of a global computer network to search for answers to climate change and extraterrestrial intelligence that no one institution or organization could find on its own. May the list of proposed projects continue to expand....
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