A quick shout-out to my friends in Berkeley who work for SETI – you guys made the Economist. Nice graf here about how hard your job is:
a single mobile phone located on the moon would give off a much stronger signal than almost every astronomical object in the radio sky. In addition to its sensitivity, the ATA also views a large patch of the sky all at once. Most other radio telescopes are like telephoto lenses, zooming into a tiny region of space. The ATA, however, is the first that can take snapshots with a wide-angle lens.
(snip)
Black holes, exploding stars, clouds of swirling hydrogen gas light-years across the galaxy—this is hallucinatory stuff. Yet if the little green men finally arrive, San Francisco—built as it is on science, tolerance and the counterculture—would seem like a natural first port-of-call.
I guess that means that now that you’ve received official recognition in the guidebook for international investors, you can start planning the IPO for your Alien Overlord Hedge Fund — the one that seeks to preserve investor’s market capitalization in the event of an invasion by multi-tentacled, drooling aliens.
Here’s a graf, no charge, for you to use in your prospectus:
“While others weep over their formerly robust Roth IRAs amidst the shattered rubble, you’ll be secure in your underground bunker, watching your share prices skyrocket! The AOHF’s forward-thinking portfolio of conductive metals (sure to be used in shock collars for surviving enslaved humans) and spices to make Soylent Green palatable will keep you on top of the world, even as you’re herded into interstellar transport ships.”
Hey, it makes as much sense as investing in the Countrywide fund that’s trying to buy up the worthless mortgages that it foisted on us only a year ago…