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This is interesting. The local city council is trialling "hitching posts" in my area. These are signs that say either "Hutt CBD" or "Wellington CBD". The idea that if you stand beside one and if somebody in a car comes by they know you are headed for that destination and can stop and offer you a lift. The signs are beside bus stops so that if nobody stops you are able to catch the next bus that comes along. It is a kind of on the fly car pooling system.

I like the idea - for a nice safe pair of suburbs like Maungaraki & Normandale with a lousy bus service it just could work. I suspect the council sees it as a cheaper alternative to improving the buses. The current infrequent service goes to Petone station so you have another bus or train to get to those popular CBD destinations. Of course you will still have to take the bus home.

Has anybody come across anything like this before? The council claim "a world first", but I rather doubt that.

Ozma and beyond

I picked up "Is Anybody Out There?" by Frank Drake and Dava Sobel from a clearance bin a while back. It purports to be about "The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" , but it is as much an autobiography for Drake. Those things are inextricably linked because Drake may well be the single most important figure in the historical development of the SETI project. It is still worth keeping in mind as there are moments in the book which get a bit "oh I'm so clever" - of course he was and is clever but it could have been handled better. Overall, apart from the self congratulation, it is a well constructed and readable tale of Drake's personal contribution to SETI and other aspects of his life in radio astronomy. The readability I suspect being Sobel's contribution to the collaboration.

The reason the book was in the clearance bin is that it is rather out of date. Much has happened in SETI in the last decade or so which is not in this book. But if you want to find out some of the pre-'90s history, it is well worth a read.