Andrew Nowicki wrote:

When a reasonable person fails to attain his
goal, he either abandons the goal or tries
a different method of attaining the goal.
An idiot is usually defined as someone who
responds to failure by doubling his efforts.

NASA is an ossified bureaucracy, but they are
not idiots. When their big SETI program failed,
they abandoned it.

   No, the funding was yanked, thanks to short-sighted politicians like
Sen. William Proxmire. There's a big difference.

SETI@homers ignore their
failures

   At what point do you decide one has 'failed' at this sort of effort?
One doesn't cover the Universe in a few decades of modest searching.

and have little if any interest in
modifying their search method. Worse yet, they
seem to believe that some extraterrestrial
civilizations have been sending powerful
microwave beams toward the Earth for millions
of years.

   Not necessairily 'millions' of years. Also there's the possibility of
locating signals not necessairily menat for us, but that we happen to
intercept.

Why would the extraterrestrial tax
payers

   'Taxpayers?' Be a little less provincial. Not everything in the
Universe should be assumed to work as it does here, in this particular
slice of human history.

support such an effort? If we ever
receive their message it will say something
like: "Life is absurd. Have a happy suicide."

   And you suspect this because...?


-- 

   You know what to remove, to reply....