This is funny. Joe Firmage, ex CEO and founder of USWeb (aka marchFIRST), left the company during its merger with CKS (where I was working at the time), to pursue his own interests, pushing his own theory that UFOs have been visiting Earth for decades, and that major accomplishments, like the microchip, were actually leaked to us from the aliens.

Okay, old news, right? Well, now he's made a generous donation to the SETI@home project, to continue its operation for at least another year.

On one level it makes sense: Rich megalomaniacal UFO believer spends millions to discover alien intelligence. We've all seen that before. The quirky part (you mean there's only one?) is that Joe has long been vocal in his belief that aliens have been guiding our development, and that he has been visited himself.

He's established his belief that aliens take an active role in the human race, so it all begs the question: Why pour money into what effectively equates to wiretapping the galactic telephone line to find the girl you gave your phone number to at party once, but who never called you back? Stalking aliens is never a good idea.