In infinite wisdom RobertMaas@YahooGroups.Com answered:

From: Rich <someone@somewhere.com>
Evidence is for the real world, and unless you are a UFO buff, their
ain't any and there is no reasonable expectation that any SETI search
will generate any.

What's "reasonable" when we have so little information to go on at
present?

You hit the nail on the head first shot. There is no reasonable
expectation. Any expectations have some basis other than reason.

Is it reasonable to look a while, or to give up alrady without
even looking any reasonable amount?

You tell me. And how long is "a while"?

How can you really be sure there's no reasonable expectation?

Either there's a reason or there is no reason. You need a positive
basis for a "reasonable expectation". Do you have one?

Do you know something the rest of us don't know?

I know that rather than proving your case you keep trying to turn
the issue around and demand the totally impossible proof that ET
does not exist.

I consider negative evidence as worth having, but not as an infinite
resource sink.

I agree. The question is, giving competing uses for the resources we have
at our disposal, what is the best distribution of uses? (See later below.)

This is wrong.

We are not talking about resource allocation, but DEBT allocation.

I only hope that you don't manage your checkbook the same way you
want the govt to borrow to pay for your pet projects.

As for NASA, it's an illustration of the way these things tend to
go.

---

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/05/16/nasa.finances.reut/index.html

NASA's finances 'in disarray'

Monday, May 17, 2004 Posted: 9:17 AM EDT (1317 GMT)

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- NASA's finances are in disarray, with significant errors in its last financial statements and inadequate documentation for $565 billion posted to its accounts, its former auditor reported.

The U.S. space agency's chief for internal financial management said the problem stemmed from a rough transition from 10 different internal accounting programs to a new integrated one.

But audit firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers noted basic accounting errors and a breakdown in NASA's financial controls.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers and NASA parted ways earlier this year, according to the space agency's inspector general, Robert Cobb.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers declined to comment, but a source familiar with the situation said the audit firm opted out of the contract because it was unhappy with the relationship.

In a scathing report on NASA's September 30, 2003, financial statement -- which got scant attention at its release but was detailed in a cover story in the May issue of CFO Magazine -- the audit firm accused the space agency of one of the cardinal sins of the accounting world: failing to record its own costs properly.

The same report said the transition to the new accounting program triggered a series of blunders that made completing the NASA audit impossible.

There were hundreds of millions of dollars of "unreconciled" funds and a $2 billion difference between what NASA said it had and what was actually in its accounts, which are held by the Treasury Department, PriceWaterhouseCoopers said in its report.

$565 billion

"The documentation NASA provided in support of its September 30, 2003, financial statements was not adequate to support $565 billion in adjustments to various financial statement accounts," the auditor wrote in a January 20 report to Cobb, NASA's inspector general.

[...]

---

And you might want to consider that *all* of the new planetary projects
Joseph Lazio posted of fall under the rubric of NASA's mismanagement of
debt dollars. Wonder where the money's actually going? NASA has no idea.

The question remains, is there some limit to the debt you are willing to
incur to pay for SETI programs?  You may be able to stack this house
of cards pretty tall. But all it takes is one small breeze and it all
comes tumbling down.

Rich