Dial M for Muldur

I guess Dana and Fox will be tracking email and text messages instead of waiting for ET to phone home as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence has called it a day, at least in one area of exploration that many of us are most familiar with, the Allen Telescope Array. I've got to tell ya, with some of the goofiness happening down here on Terra Firma, I'm not sure this is the best of times to take the distant early warning signal about visitors from Somewhere Else off-line.

And yet, as Dylan suggested, money doesn't talk, it swears. And right now, for the SETI folks it's not saying anything. Turns out, just because we always have doesn't mean we always will or can.

Notice how I'm not taking a position on the question of 'is there intelligent life on other planets?' Heqq, somedays I'm not sure about intelligent life on this one. I'll admit it would be nice, though I can't really say why, to think that we're not alone in the universe. Yes, for those who have a religious faith, you do have an advantage on a wanderer like me but I think the trade-off may be in how much more easily you despair of finding your Divinity in the vastness of the void.

But, speaking of religion and extraterrestrials, what do we do if the latter do touch down on their way to Alpha Centauri for the holiday weekend, and tell us they created the God(s) we worship? Do we then worship them? What do the atheists and agnostics do? And will that revelation make it easier or harder to get a tee time on a Sunday morning in the middle of June at a golf course in the Carolinas? But then who we will get to caddy? Aye, that's the rub; okay it's a reduced part of the rub.

Bad enough NASA has been reduced to collecting redeemable bottles and cans to buy fuel for the Mars Rover, but now Buzz Lightyear may be the shape of things to come. Prayers they hide the saddest view and prayers they break the sky in two. Believing the strangest things, loving the alien.

-bill kenny