SETI Dreams

Last night I dreamed I was beginning a novel. Which is not far from the truth; I'm slated to begin outlining one on Dec 26th (and I'm supposed to be finishing the 2nd draft of another one right this moment . . .)

But in my dream, I was apparently writing a novel featuring SETI (the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence). I was sitting in a coffee shop, my tablet computer in front of me (hmm, must have been a glimpse into the future where I own a tablet computer). I was reworking the first line. It went something like,

"Drake first listened for alien signals in 1960. Little did he know that SETI was far older."

Hmm, I wonder where that story is going? Someday, maybe we'll see.

ET Calling? Nope, Moronic Reporting

A potentially exciting event occurred today--we received signals from intelligent aliens elsewhere in the universe!

Though skeptical, Bad Astronomy and Centauri Dreams both discussed it.

However, if you read what is apparently the original source of the news, you immediately suspect that some moron reporter misunderstood something but blithely wrote on, hoping to bull through the segment without having to really think about the title and first few lines of the report.

And thus it was. It didn't take more than an hour or so to confirm with Seth Shostak, the head of SETI, that the report was bogus.

I'm Bruce Cordell, your source of non-news, signing off.

UPDATE [Friday 1/18/08]: Apparently, the news source that originally reported the story that aliens were contacting earth blames its readers for the error.