| Personal background |
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| I am 60 years of age, have (2) two associate degrees, one is technical the other is an arts degree. Retired from the military after 23 years of service. Married to the same woman for forty(40) years now with two grown children and five grandchildren. I am disabled and not able nor allowed to work. Having a computer that I seldom use I thought that I would try to put it to some use other than being a large paper weight in my "office" at home. I have worked many various jobs over the years, everything from pumping gas to doing some minor surgery (yes on people.) I have been a teacher, worked in medicine, construction, electronics, farming, and the best job a parent. I was born and raised in the midwest of the United States but left that area at the age of 17 when I joined the military, returned home every two to three years for a visit. I was fortunate to be able to visit many other countries and see various cultures and while doing so sampled the local cuisine. I made some friends in many of the areas that I visited, learned a great deal about other peoples and cultures. Most importantly, I believe, is how and why they view the United States positively or negatively. I gained some insight into what we, the people of this country, can do to favorably influence the opinions of others as it relates to the U.S. as a whole and United States citizens individually. I enjoy reading fiction, science and of course watching T.V. My wife of 40 years and I go out on a date twice a month for dinner and a movie, or at times just for a walk around town to see the changes. We travel to visit our children or to go back to the mid-west to see the sites where we both grew up. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I, personally, run this program because I do not believe that we are alone in this galaxy and hopefully we will find them first and find out something about these others they find out about us. I tend to agree with Steven Hawking when he said basically that "The more advanced civilization tends to destroy the lesser advanced civilization when they finally find each other." I do not know if there is a god but if there is I tend to think that we are NOT the most advanced civilization in the galaxy and therefore we would be wise to find out about others before they find us.
I wish that the United States would focus more attention, effort and funding on the education of our children in the sciences. Only through our children and grandchildren are we going to find the needed advances in sciences for the world to be on a par with other civilizations if and when we finally encounter it or them. If we could take the money wasted on this on going conflict for one year and give it over to the proper and effective education of our children and grandchildren we could open the pages on so many new discoveries. Things like alternate sources of energy, improved life sciences for the world, improved crop production, sequestration of carbon in the atmosphere, means of rapid space travel to travel to other stars. Seti, offers something that we should appreciate and that is the possibility of discovering that there is another species out there. Finding another advanced civilization would offer a boost to the idea that perhaps we should stop fighting and concentrate on getting along with each other before it becomes to late.
So I offer to Seti the use of this computer almost 24 hours a day and once in a while I give a bit of money to them with the hope that they will and can use it to discover that for which we so dimly search.
Suggestions, yeah it seems to me that people are buying new computers all the time and junking the old ones working or not. SETI is always looking to increase it computing power so it might be a good idea to take the old computers and set them up in a bank to direct them as they do with us in its search for "them". Working with the university as they are they should be able to get grad students a task to interface all these older computers into one great super computer to help sift through the data we are processing. |
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