Organic matter in meteorites, ‘Alien Minds, Human Minds’ and time lag in ET correspondence

Welcome! “Alien Life” tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. You may notice that this and future entries are shorter than usual; Career, family and book deal commitments have forced me to cut back some of my projects. Now, here’s today’s news:
g Abodes - NASA researchers have found organic materials that formed in the early Solar System preserved in the freshest meteorite ever received from space. Organic matter in meteorites is of intense interest because this material may have seeded the early Earth with the building blocks of life. See http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.
phpop=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2163mode=thread&
order=0&thold=0.
g Imagining - Book alert: Of course, quality science fiction is really less about aliens than the human condition. That’s why you ought to scour some used bookstores for this rare edition: “Star Trek on the Brain: Alien Minds, Human Minds,” by Robert Sekuler and Randolph Blake. An educational and entertaining nonfiction work that uses Star Trek to explain the workings of the human mind, the authors (both psychology professors) have put together an excellent and highly readable neurology primer. Their two-pronged task is to give a Star Trek example and then link it to contemporary science of the nervous system. Do you want to better understand emotions, their cultural implications and universal expressions? Then this is the book. For reviews, see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/
0716732793/scifimoviescom/002-5433233-4801635.
g Aftermath - If we hear from ET, not only can we expect his civilization to be an old one with a great time lag in correspondence, a SETI astronomer says. Could this limit the impact of extraterrestrial contact upon humanity? See http://www.space.
com/searchforlife/seti_long_distance_011227.html. Note: This article is from December 2001.