h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh dear.

It's been brought to my attention that this entry is, in the words of a certain lager commercial, 'not ready yet'. I've been following this discussion on and off and actually accepted this having been reading the very positive comments in an entirely different thread to an entirely different entry.

I need to have a chat with the rest of the Editorial team on this, so bear with me. But in the short term, apologies for giving everyone a bit of a jolt when they saw the earlier acceptance message - and apologies to the Scout who picked it too.

Jimster

Well I'm still subscribed BUT I'm rather surprised (and more than a little disillisusioned with the PR process) that this entry has been picked - bearing in mind that many suggestions that this needs reworking have been resolutely ignored

Once again my reply was a few minutes late

Hope you convince the rest of the Italics Jimster

I've held of from picking this as I've been of the opinion that it wasn't ready either.

As a non-Scientist, and incurable romantic, I thought this entry was a little harsh on SETI@home.

This passage seesm wholly unnecessary to me:

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programme [is a secular religion (organized system of ideas and practices for people who are interested in finding their place in the universe; etymilogically, the word 'religion' from the latin root 'legare', from which we also get 'ligament', means 'reconnection')] founded by Carl Sagan.

I think maybe the parts between [] should be removed, and the word 'was' inserted. How can you describe SETI as a "religion ? Even if this is meant tongue-in-cheek, I don't think it works. Is that really how "etymilogically" is spelt ?

Having said that, it's a good read. I'd like to know more about how much money is spent on funding SETI - does it compare with US Defence spending, for instance ?

One more gripe, a few too many "and"s.

Overall, I think that if you want to make fun of a project like SETI, and do it effectively *and* humorously, you need to throw in a few more facts to back it up.

Why doesn't someone start searching for the s here on Earth - from what I see every day, we've already been invaded.

Pip Pip !

Perry.

One thing worth pointing out, that I've seen mixed in a few posts throughout the thread:

SETI and SETI@home are *not* the same thing. SETI@home is an offshoot of the larger SETI project, which has been around for rather longer.

The entry that's currently in the EG is about the SETI@home project.

This entry, on the other hand, is largely critiquing the SETI project as a whole, and does not seem to be focusing on the SETI@home project.

Just for clarification's sake...


Mikey

Hi Mikey

It's a dig at both though, isn't it ? What I get from it this entry is - SETI is misconceived; SETI@home therefore must be doubly misconceived ?



P.

As I said above, SETI@home is a part of SETI, a subunit or daughter project if you will.

I don't remember seeing anywhere in this entry where the SETI@home project is actually mentioned. Oh, just did a text search -- it's never mentioned by name, there's only this sentence: "Perhaps the home computers crunching numbers for SETI right now could be crunching numbers for medical research, for example."

I think that makes it pretty clear that the author thinks the concept of SETI@home is valid *if* the concept for SETI is valid. After all, the author seems to think that using personal computers to do number crunching for another large-scale project would be worthwhile -- it's just that he's seeing some large-scale projects as more worthwhile than others.

So no, I don't see this entry as being at all about SETI@home -- it's about potential flaws in the concept of the larger SETI project. Now, if someone agrees with the author, it's quite likely that they would also rank SETI@home as being less of a priority than the home number crunching programs that work on HIV vaccines or genetic research. But I don't think that makes this entry any more about SETI@home than an entry that is an overview of computers should be considered to be about the Dell brand of PCs. If you think all computers are worthless, you probably don't think much of Dell -- but that wouldn't change the fact that Dell is only a very small subunit of what computers are all about, and wouldn't make an entry "on computers" into one "on Dell", even if Dell was mentioned in a sentence somewhere.


Mikey

Thank you Jimster.

Nice to know our concerns are justified.

I pointed out a factual error which has been ignored, it's still in the entry.

I've reposted at the entry.

So does this entry now magically reappear in PR?

> So does this entry now magically reappear in PR?

Hi AGB,

The author ( U109577 ) last posted to this thread on May 1st ( F36603?thread=257209&post=3397437#p3397437 ) so I think that IF this entry was still in PR, it would be on it's way to the Writing-FleaMarket very soon anyhow...

The review thread has been taken out of Peer Review and is attached to the entry.

The entry itself is no longer in any of the review fora. Its status is also set as 'Not for Review', so it cannot be entered into a forum by a passing researcher at a later date. The only one who can restart the review process is the original author - who appears to be MIA.

Therefore this entry is dead in the water as far as its progress towards the Edited Guide is concerned.

Please send no flowers