"Sorry Aliens," We Have a Big Deficit

Our longstanding desire to become part of a galactic empire by establishing contact with alien kingdoms received a setback. The reason is, as one might expect, not the lack of aliens or their potential habitats in the universe but the cash crunch.

With all due respect, I choose to say that we must avoid broadcasting the news about our budget shortfall (print is fine but no radio telecasting).The extraterrestrials might pick up these signals and would lose any interest on this planet. Who on the universe would come to a planet that has no money for even intergalactic communication and whose resources are being depleted by the members of the same primary gene pool?

Last April,the SETI Institute (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), announced "Federal and state funding cutbacks for operations of U.C. Berkeley's Hat Creek Radio Observatory (HCRO) force hibernation of Allen Telescope Array."