Last night I took a night off, and tonight I did, too, but I at least got out of the house. I joined Kishore Hari’s Down to a Science program for tonight’s presentation from Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute.

Shostak talked about the history and mission of the SETI project, and took lots of questions from a largely excited and completely sympathetic audience. I can’t really do justice to Shostak’s talk. If you’ve followed SETI at all, frankly, there was not a lot of new information, but I hadn’t quite realized what an engaging speaker he is ad lib.

And he took potshots at dolphins, Neptune, San Mateo, college education, the impoverished prisoners of the 4 dimensions we experience, people with navels, AND the post office. I mean, in a nice way, but I can’t help saying, you know, the post office has a really hard job. It’s like DNA, when you think about it, especially if you really love your Netflix subscription, as I do – so many things can go wrong it’s kind of amazing what a good job they do.

Anyway, if you get a chance to see him in an interactive environment, go!