This is just for my personal reference later: A niece of Osama bin Laden is launching a career as a pop singer after rejecting her Muslim background and throwing herself into the London party scene.

I am all abuzz with misspent adrenaline and rejection, but this story caught my eye, and I thought I might talk about it for a moment. Three and a half-year old SETI@home project identifies candidate radio signals.

Everyone involved is quick to stress that the odds of actually finding a real signal that's originating from some alien transmitter is low, perhaps fantastically low. No doubt there will be at least a few breathless articles written about our iminent first contact within the next few days, anyway. Maybe. I mean, if anyone cares.

Distributed computing is super awesome cool, though, is what I want to say, I guess. Uh, maybe more on this later.

"...in which case, that too, that cynical distaste at her own persona, was deliberately put on! And that scorn for the distaste which she was busy contriving, was so much play-acting too! And her doubt about her scorn...it was maddening. Once you started being sincere, was there no end to it?"
--
Simone de Beauvoir, L'Invitée