Man, beat me to it. Here's the quote anyway.

In the FY 2012 consolidated spending act (Public Law 112-074) signed by President Barack Obama last Friday, TSA received about $7.85 billion, up $153 million from 2011.

Entirely agree, it does seem like we (humans) have been vastly underestimating the intelligence of all the creatures around us.

I never smile if I can help it. Showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life. - Dwight Schrute

I have a feeling I would get called out on that instantly and it would create even more questions, but then again most of the non-IT people I work with are engineers are and highly technical.

I'm going from a purely Judeo-Christian view here, I do not know enough about Islam or other religions to make any statements about them. Genesis states that God created us in his image and gave us dominion over all the other creatures on the earth.

20: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21: And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22: And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23: And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 24: And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25: And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 26: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28: And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Going off of this if ETs are found and are technologically/culturally/etc.. superior then we aren't the only "chosen" ones, and from the way I see it some people may find that quite hard to stomach. So an "intelligent" ET is vastly different from a squid, starfish or mockingbird because they have been given the same or more "dominion" we have.

While I agree that this would probably happen it would be interesting to see what happens to the whole God created us in his/her image idea. If there are extraterrestrials found at some point and they are vastly different from us then whose image did God create them in?

The salesman actually tried to talk me out of buying my HTC Trophy. It seems to me that Verizon has somewhat of a bias against Windows Phone 7, they were late getting even one available on their network and even then it was just an average phone, specs wise, and there was no real fan fair when it was released. I'm going to say when the largest mobile carrier decides they don't really like you it could have some ramifications as to how well your phone OS does. Having owned an Android phone and iPhone I can say that I like the WP7 UI better, but as others have said that's just personal preference.

That would be interesting, but imagine the storm of criticism that would come about if the other program(s) is/are discovered. I think it would end up making them look even worse, unless the average person has forgotten about all this by then.

Which is, IMO, one of the many big issues congress currently has. We have no one, or very few, legislators that have the capability to critically think the bills and proposals through. This in combination with all the lobbying going on leads to insanity like SOPA or PROTECT-IP. The people with half a brain notice that these bills aren't a good idea, though they probably have no idea as to how bad they are, but the rest of them are completely happy to remain, as a previous poster put it, willfully ignorant. When you're tasked with making decisions that may affect the entire country, and in some cases the entire world, you better have every single looked at every single aspect of whatever is in front of you, to remain ignorant in this situation should be considered criminal and a dereliction of duty.

I ride a motorcycle to work everyday and have around a 32 mile commute one way. In places where there's an HOV (carpool lane) there are definitely major advantages since I get to skip most of the gridlock, but you definitely have to have somewhat of a high appetite for risk. I'd like to think I'm more away of my surroundings and take extra precautions compared to the other drivers on the road, I leave huge spaces open in front of me especially in the carpool lane in case one of the people going 20mph, when I'm doing 65mph, one lane over decides to jump in. I also will let anyone remotely close behind me pass since when I have the chance since I don't want to get run over.