The Assignment:

1 . Well, it finally happened. You were engaged in your usual habit of spending hours per week refining your Facebook or MySpace pages and generally inflating your accomplishments and interests will trying to figure out exactly how to tag your latest image. While you were sitting in front of your screen, you suddently received a SPAM message that said:

Warning, Warning, Warning - the world will end in about 15 minutes; The only thing that will survive as a record of humanity will be your Facebook/Myspace page. Furthermore, the only thing that will survive are MP3 files.

Message signed: The Vogon Construction Fleet (google them).

Well, just in the oft chance that the Vogon Construction Fleet is real, you decided to make your contribution.

So, the question is, what one musical artist would you choose to leave behind to represent humanity by defining what your global view of humanity is, and why would you choose this particular artist. Note: you can only choose one artist.

P.S. Note that the following artists are forbidden from being considered since, hopefully, they represent an aberration: David Lee Roth, the Bangles, Poison, Richard Marx, Aerosmith, Disturbed, Jennifer Simpson, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Michael Bolton, Korn.

2. In the class notes we make use of the Drake equation as providing a statistical estimate of the number of civilizations that might exist in our Galaxy and are capable of communication. Recently, however, some scientists have argued that the Drake equation is an inaccurate description. This new theory is known as the "Rare Earth Theory" (by Ward and Brownless). Do some reserach on this new theory and identify what the key components of this theory are that suggests planets like the Earth are much rarer than we think they are.

3. As many of you heard, or saw the movie, the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was thought to be the result of an asteroid impact. Since so many people are saying this it must be true. So, a) find out and report on how secure you think the evidence is that indeed an asteroid did strike the Earth and b) if this impact occurred how, in fact, did it cause a mass-extinction. In other words, what was the mechanism that extincted both ends of the food chain (e.g. the dinosaurs became extinct but so did most forms of ocean plankton). Something more than just blocking out the sun with some dust in the atmosphere must have occurred.