The New Yorker has an interview of Douglas Vakoch , author of Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication , a new book about the complexities of communicating with extraterrestrials, released last month by NASA.

From the New Yorker article: "For a long time, the people most interested in searching for extraterrestrial intelligence came from "hard science" disciplines like astronomy or physics; to them, the main obstacles seemed technical (building radio telescopes, processing signal data). But, in recent years, the field has broadened to include people who already study other civilizations here on Earth. In these essays, they report that their jobs are hard enough as it is. Archaeologists struggled to decipher ancient Greek; deciphering a transmission from another world will be even more difficult. Even if we do manage to detect a signal, they write, fully understanding what it means may be impossible."

You can submit your own recommendation for outbound communications to ET on the Earth Speaks website, and browse what others have submitted.

Greetings - I'm one of the volunteer editors, and thought I'd take the liberty*** to poll readers on what kind of articles we all find interesting . It's an "approval method" poll, so tick the box on any of the multiple subjects that interest you, and leave blank the ones you dislike. We'll see which topics rise to the surface (and which ones sink!)

The more I use the Pipedot interface the more I love it, especially given the competition. But a site like this is most interesting if it posts articles readers are interested in and that generate interesting and useful conversation (otherwise, what's the point?).

If you don't see a topic you'd like to discuss, just add it in the comments. Let's make Pipedot the first site you read in the morning. Having a better sense of what's interesting will help volunteer editors prioritize the best articles for submission. Thanks!

***"Take the liberty" means "didn't bother to ask Bryan." :)

Reuters has an interesting article about the new partnership between FTSI (formally Frac Tech) and Sinopec to bring technological practices from the American shale gas revolution to China, where the potential for shale gas exploration and fraccing technology is significant. The article states that no-one knows where and when the next major unconventional hydrocarbon play will be found, but that Sinopec has already been looking in the Sichuan Basin. Were China to find a significant gas resource, it might help them to reduce their reliance on coal which has recently been estimated to cause a 5.5 year reduction in life expectancy .