<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Dec 28, 2010, at 11:50 PM, The Avantguardian wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">If machine-phase<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>life is so inevitable and so<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>superior, where are the Von Neumann probes?</span></blockquote><div><br></div>Two possible answers:<br><br></div><div>1) Somebody has to be the first intelligent technological civilization in the visible universe, perhaps it is us.</div><div><br></div><div>2) Some road block prevents intelligence from engineering the cosmos, my best guess of what that impediment is would be electronic drug addiction.</div><div><br></div><div>There may be other answers to your very important question but those are the only ones I can think of that make any sense to me.</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark </div><br></body></html>