Communiques to Nowhere: TalkToAliens.com began taking orders in March, recording people’s messages at $3.99 per minute and beaming them into space, aimed toward the Milky Way by a huge parabolic dish antenna in Connecticut on a relatively accessible FM frequency. And in December, German inventor Juergen Broether introduced his “telephonic angel” system (at about US$2,000), which is a battery-operated, underground loudspeaker that, buried at a gravesite, allows someone to speak into a microphone and have the messages amplified through the dirt to the departed for up to a year on a single battery charge. [Space Daily, 3-8-05] [Agence France-Presse, 2-5-05]