we should be more interested in finding intelligent life on this planet and focus our money and energy on recruiting and paying our teachers and their vocations to develop this needed reality .........

Regardless of whether or not you put much stock in SETI, the entire project does cover a lot of interesting and useful territory. I enjoyed this production very much, the only thing I would say was a negative is the fact that the speaker went almost the entire way through it with her eyes shut. Looks like a nervous tick or something, but whatever it is, it was kind of distracting. So I just listened without watching so much, I think I got much more out of it that way.

Now, I know I just boldly stated my thesis here, but hear me out.1. Steven Hawking has already demonstrated the impracticality of intelligent life within our relative corner of the universe. He has stated, and I paraphrase, that the likelihood of intelligent life existing within 100 light years of us is null.2. SETI is a passive search, meaning they wait and sit in their chairs for something coming to us. This process can be devalued by Hawking's comment earlier, but it can also be devalued in this case... How long did it take humans to develop the technology to broadcast our "intelligent" signals across the universe? According to wikipedia, the first humans existed some 200,000 years ago. from the origin of our species it took us approximately 199,800 years to create the signals. Does SETI want to wait that long?3. How much money is spent on these endeavors? The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) cost started with a 11.5 million dollar donation from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation in 2001. As of 2007, the array had cost near $50 million, and there was a plan for 350 more telescopes with an additional price tag of $41 million. Essentially $91 million will have been spent on this Array. To give a reference on a related space endevour, the X-prize in 2009 was a total of $2 million.Can't this money be used better? What if SETI jumped into a more aggressive search for life by essentially getting into space travel? Obviously $91 million would probably only kick start a program and much more funding would be needed as a whole, but if they could join the rush into space they could essentially monetize the process, like what Virgin Airlines is trying to do. I'm not saying adapt a space tourism approach, but that would help pay for their future programs.The woman here talks about the search for Extraterrestrial life looking at the ocean by dipping a glass in the ocean. This is not entirely true because they are not going to the ocean to fill their glass of water. They're not even near the ocean, they're in the desert looking at the horizon and saying that's the ocean, there must be fish in it. however, without going to that horizon, they may never know that they're just looking at a mirage. I'm not saying that there may be some mirage happening in space, I'm saying that SETI isn't going into space. They need to explore. If Columbus sat in a castle and looked at the ocean with a telescope hoping to find land, he would have never found North America. SETI, go into space!