I just love this pic.

It comes from some film and was used to illustrate the review in The Times of The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe? by Paul Davies. The book sounds really interesting, although I'll never read it as I just don't get round to non-fiction. Two things highlighted in the review: That sending out signals to announce ourselves to any intelligent life could be akin to 'a smiling child attempting to make friends with a crocodile.' And the idea that intelligent life, wherever it may exist, may not last very long because it simply burns itself out through its violent impact on environment. Human life may exist for a fraction of time only, relatively speaking, and if the same applies elsewhere it's very unlikely that two intelligent civilisations would exist at once. The metaphor Davies used was a town of 100 houses whose lights came on for only a few seconds each night. Communication would only be possible if two house's lights came on at once, making it virtually impossible. Haunting thought that.