And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth

A quick funny story, and then some follow-ups.

The SETI Program is simultaneously one of the great undertakings of mankind, and likely a waste of time. It is a project that virtually every astronomer is glad to see in existence, but happy not too work on. SETI, the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence, is the program that worked in the book and movie versions of Carl Sagan's Contact, but has yet to produce any real results in reality...until now!

It's not quite what you'd expect. You see, the most visionary component of the current SETI initiative is Seti@Home, whereby they take their data at large radio telescopes, but ship it off to millions of people's desktop PC's to crunch their numbers and report back. It was the first of these programs which are now also used for Protein Folding, cryptography, and any number of other projects. According to an AP story that got posted to Slashdot:

One volunteer, James Melin, a software programmer for a county government agency in Minnesota, runs SETI(at)home on his seven home computers, which periodically check in with University of California servers. Whenever that happens, the servers record the remote computer's Internet Protocol address and file it in a database that people running the SETI software can view.

One of the computers on which Melin installed SETI(at)home is his wife's laptop, which was stolen from the couple's Minneapolis home Jan. 1.

Annoyed and alarmed that someone could delete the screenplays and novels that his wife, Melinda Kimberly, was writing Melin monitored the SETI(at)home database to see if the stolen laptop would "talk" to the Berkeley servers. Indeed, the laptop checked in three times within a week, and Melin sent the IP addresses to the Minneapolis Police Department.
...
Kimberly's writings were safe, and the thieves didn't appear to have broken into her e-mail or other personal folders. But the returned computer contained 20 tracks of rap music with unintelligible lyrics, possibly from the person who stole the computer or bought it on the underground.

"It's really, really horrid rap," Melin said. "It makes Ludacris look like Pavarotti."

Kimberly was more enamored with Melin's detective work.

"I always knew that a geek would make a great husband," she said.

I wholeheartedly agree with that final sentiment. Remember: Seti@Home -- It's like Lojack for your computer.

To update some previous posts, the problems at Walter Reed are now being addressed, since a public s#!tstorm is the one thing that can actually bring about action in Washington. According to the daily update in The Washington Post:

Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, used terminology similar to that of a military campaign to describe his plan to overhaul the broken building, including giving it a more "appropriate" name, and the sluggish bureaucracy for outpatient care.

"We own that building, and we're going to take charge of it," Cody said at the Pentagon. "The senior Army leadership takes full responsibility for the lack of quality of life at Building 18, and we're going to fix it."

Cody blamed "a breakdown in leadership" for the troubling conditions but said no one has been fired or relieved of command. He did point to lower-ranking officers and noncommissioned officers lacking "the right experience and the authority to be able to execute some of the missions."

As i remember, based on the past few decades, or maybe even past few centuries, the proper adjective for those who claim to take responsibility for something, refuse to hold anyone accountable, and then pass the buck by blaming nameless inferiors in the organization is "presidential". I should note that the US Army had some warning about potential problems, as Salon published a story about mistreatment of vets with brain injuries TWO YEARS AGO, and again last year!

Speaking about being ahead of the times, or in this case ahead of the NY Times, the video of the Amy Winehouse song "Rehab" that dkon posted on December 28 of last year just hit one of the new blogs at the Grey Lady, as a prescient commentary on the sad tale of Britney Spears from across the pond (though I would note that the misadventures of Pete Doherty and Kate Moss might be more apropos).

Finally, our local basketball team. As I suggested after considering the immensely obvious details, the player who was released from the team after crashing his car into a tree and nearly killing a teammate has been charged with DUI and leaving the scene of an accident. He was at the game we played tonight, laughing it up with teammates, which frankly disgusts me. I'm not suggesting that he is the worst human being on the planet, but he nearly killed a teammate, and then left him in the car while he went off to do God only knows what (it's been suggested that he tried to mask the fact that he was driving drunk). WTF is he doing joking it up with teammates? Innocent until proven guilty, but keep him the hell away from the team and the limelight. While we're at it, not to be racist, but the car he crashed was his grandparents' Lexus...yes, a Lexus. Either his family is more wealthy than I would have suspected, or the University might want to pay its players a bit less conspicuously, lest we get hit with NCAA sanctions.

Racism at UIUC was symbolized by Chief Illiniwek, but as promised, tonight was the last time that a white dude wearing traditional Sioux garb did a dance inspired third-hand by Plains Indian tribal dances to honor the tribes of Illinois who were driven out of the state in the face of the Western Expansion of other tribes being forced out of their traditional lands by colonial genocide. On ESPN, they just showed some girl with "Chief" painted on her forehead bawling uncontrollably at the site of our team mascot's final performance. Seriously, WTF? 100 Americans are killed in Iraq every month, to say nothing of thousands upon thousands of Iraqis. People all over the world are suffering. People all over the USA are suffering...and you are moved to copious tears because our racist mascot no longer gets to perform at halftime. If nothing else can explain why I hold many people in horribly low regard, this is it. Crying, bitching, moaning, and whining over the loss of a mascot is utterly pathetic, just pathetic. Grow the hell up, and stop embarrassing yourself, the university, and all of the people out there who can recognize plain old-fashioned idiocy when they see it. Jesus H. Christ, people annoy the crap out of me sometimes.