I have driven a transit bus for 20 years in Seattle. I do this strictly for the money. Working six hours a day and starting at five in the morning gives me time for other activities.
Photography is my passion and in the last year I've have taught myself Photoshop. After having used film I have switched entirely to digital. It sure beats those long days in the darkroom.
Recently Astronomy has caught my attention and despite living in Seattle with the requisite cloudy skies, I am very excited. After just one night under clear skies I've discovered what a difference there is to looking real time at the sky and looking at Hubble photographs. Despite the limitations of my eye and telescope system the live view creates a wonder no phtotograph can acheive.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
Despite the fact that ET life seems the only possible outcome for a universe so grand in scale, I believe that for the far forseeable future that belief will have to be a leap of faith similiar to a religious belief in God. I also believe that that discovery will quite possibly occur from a mistake or unrelated inquiry.
Our active attempt to find and to be discovered is much more important for our own souls than for any possiblity of being successful. Of course we should transmit a beacon and the fact that we are transmitting says far more about us than any empirical data that we send.
I run Seti@home because you have a great screensaver! No really the fact that we are attempting contact indicates our desire to learn and become a member of the universe. It is too bad the money doesn't exist to target the search.
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.
