Science/Astronomy:

* Is SETI Barking up the Wrong Tree?

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_thursday_060720.html

Some people mistakenly confuse a long search with a thorough one, and figure
that the lack of a SETI detection indicates that we're alone in the Galaxy.
This, however, is nonsense.

One point not really addressed in this article as to why we aren't getting
a cosmic hello yet is that SETI has only intermittently looked for ETI in
this realm here:

http://www.aob.bg.ac.yu/~mcirkovic/paper_v4.pdf

and here:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0505006

and here:

http://www.ieti.org/articles/8.htm

Just as it took from 1961 to 1998 for the mainstream SETI community to finally
start accepting and conducting Optical SETI, it will take time - especially in
regards to getting out of being mired with UFOs and alien abductions - for
the mainstream SETI community to really start looking beyond radio signals
from yellow dwarf stars.

There may be a few ETI similar to us doing similar things, but odds are due
to evolution and the age of the galaxy that many more ETI are way past that
level. At this point we may have to settle for their artificial scraps from their
cosmic tables (infrared signatures, random signals, hyperspace bypasses).