I love the response from Protilius.

"Look at what we've done with cows... Ah yes, the big dumb cow. An excellent source of nourishment. An entire race bred for one purpose only. Tell me honestly... Has anyone ever seen a wild cow before?

Trust me, they don't exist.

Which all brings me to the real question we should be asking.

What will a superior race think of humans I wonder? And if their intents ever become hostile, what could any of us do to stop somebody with the power to travel the cosmos to stop in and say 'hi, we're here for your women and resources, hold still now, this'll be over soon...'"

I can then only hope that the first creature they stumble across is a cow.

A country obviously needs to be at an economic level such that there is sufficient disposable income to fund such things. That eliminates most countries, but leaves the US, Canada, Australia, several Asian countries, and the European union.

But even if the money is available, the bureaucrats in government must be convinced to spend it. I would suggest that scientific rationalism not only killed God in the minds of the European public, but also the will to search for other "things unseen" including extraterrestrial intelligence. As a result the bureaucrats will not spend the money.

Americans on the other hand are still irrational, and so we continue to enjoy searching for God, and for extraterristrials....

"...we continue to enjoy searching for God, and for extraterristrials..."

Suppose that we find one...and discover that it is the other?

I do agree it has much to do with economics. And we must put in eco-nomics that has to do with location and the eco unfriendly areas that the SETI equipment would have to occupy. The geological locations that would give us the 360 observations may not be in a friendly location,or in a region that would destroy a wet land or the view of a politicians back yard. It would seem Steve and bhank hit it just right. We/ us / them would have the burden to convince the other countries that we had some type of obligation to search for for the possibility of our out lying neighbors. Then who do we all agree on that would be paying for this type of convincing? I am afraid it would fall on the USA tax payers.

Economics, really?

First, SETI is privately funded, not by your tax dollars. The yearly operational budget for SETI is under 1/2 million dollars. Heck, organizations spend more than that on studying dung droppings from wild African rhinos for hemorrhoids.

Sorry I was looking at the underlying grants from NASA and the NSF(tax dollars) for their research. And the grants from MIT, OHIO State, and Harvard. All the grants were Federally subsidised . But I digress the SETI league is funding 90% of the projects now. I suppose their adopt a scientist program is not catching on in other countries. But on the topic. I am all for it, But as it seems most of the proof we need is on the cover of our check out stand magazines.who says they have to be an advanced race. If the thought is everything was created at the same time would not other "peoples" out there be at around the same tech level as us?

I know. It is disturbing that we have nothing at all in the way of signals.

There are a lot of possibilities why that may be the case and the lack of anything tangible at all is probably why the lack of interest world wide.

We have very short attention spans. The next big Hollywood space movie might rekindle interest if the special effects and monsters thrill us enough.

The lack of signals is entirely due to the vast expanse of space. If something lived out at the centre of the universe, we could have only just started to see it's "first light" as it had traveled towards us all that time. What they are hoping for is some signal that was generated many eons ago by a much more advanced life form than us which means that if they find something out there responding to us trying to "nudge" them, it will most certainly not be cows.

I too agree with the effort and I have registered my computer before now on their network for them to use the excess power when it was not in use (but had to be switched on for my work). Now I am back to a pauper having to pay myself for everything and the computer spends its entire day cooling of from the previous night on CR4

Thinking, hoping or even willing the existence of some ET is like any other faith but without a god. It's like what Einstein and Carl Sagan both said, Science is my faith and the constant search for explanations is an urge.

With regards to the economics of it I think the economic priorities are set by the lack of normal life necessities such as food water and housing. Once you are free from the search for these and your mind starts automatically searching for answers to all questions you may encounter, it is human nature. The search for ET may in this context be considered frivolous to some but I think you will have a hard job trying to stop it as I believe it is in our cosmic makeup.

Yes, but SETI only uses $500,000 per year operational expense. More interesting, it is privately funded. Now, they have sponsored projects costing millions, but the money comes from donations or grants.

The actual cost to do this is so small that it does not fit the argument that there are other financial priorities.

More likely, the population is just bored with the idea and go rent a DVD and buy a lottery ticket when they want an alien fix.

Check out SETI's FAQ and see how many questions people ask about UFOs. That should give you a perspective as to where most people's heads are at.

I understand what you mean but I have to disagree with the general state of things on this point. If you miss, really lack, the basic means to have a proper life, your priorities are very different from what you and I would perceive as important. Just to fill your stomach once a day is a real quest for some people and to have clean water is impossible for some as well. Once these issues have been resolved, we tend to look further for our QandA fixes.

I realise you mean that given the minimal money spent on SETI in comparison to space exploration, farm subsidies and indeed the army, it should not be an issue to any government to have a full fledged SETI program. Unfortunately you are right, we seem to have gone into sensory overload and got completely transfixed by all the technological things possible in films, games and even real life adventures nowadays.

I think you are right to state that this is why SETI is not so high up on our ladder of researches but that is also explained in the article which says that we (Europeans) are too level headed although the UK is better than the rest in Europe. Money for us does not come into the equation but attitude and lifestyle does.

For countries in deep Africa I can see why no contributions from governments would be forthcoming.

However, there are many, many nations with much deeper pockets that could easily plop down 1 or 2 million dollars a year and it just wouldn't make a dent in their national budget.

That tells me something else is driving the apathy. The writer of the article was looking to correlate that with culture. However, the data doesn't correlate with countries like Great Briton, so I become skeptical that the root cause lies there.

Maybe the reason for the current state is simply this. SETI started in the USA because we had the leading technologies to make this happen. The Soviet Union had a program of their own, but the collapse of the Soviet Union put an end to the program.

The US government not long after dropped funding. That left private individuals to pick up the pieces. It seems reasonable that the main players would be US citizens because that was where the equipment and research was. However, more and more individuals around the globe are joining the team. So it is becoming more of a global effort.

Since the US government dropped the program, no governments are sponsoring SETI. So you can make a case that it is no longer a US only sponsored organization.

Good points.

You are right that it is more becoming a global affair now but only very very slowly and almost no progress from year to year.

The lack of tangible results must be put in here as well as you mentioned before.

I don't know we do actually know why SETI is not more popular than it is. To some, me including, it is very alluring but most, me including, would not be prepared to put income towards it. For me, I cannot speak for others of course, the reason is that in my opinion there are more worthwhile efforts needed to advance our own knowledge and abilities in space exploration. I would be prepared to see tax money go towards a Moon base or even Mars base.

I also think that we spend such a ridiculous amount on weaponry and offense, that it shows our efforts put in space exploration in stark contrast which may reflect our true nature. We are just some tribal and mistrusting little species just happened to have evolved a brain a bit too large for its intended function. Result is too much war and not enough space exploration

So maybe the Vatican will help finance SETI??

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080513/ap_on_re_eu/vatican_aliens

Who was it that said "the best evidence for intelligent life elsewhere is that they have used this planet as their loony bin"?

Apparently you did, because a search on the intergalactic net turns up nothing.