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Comment Re:disclosure (Score 5, Interesting) 448

'He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. Im a little curious if it is standard practice to not disclose this type of relationship. If it is, it is wrong. I see an ethics issue at hand

  Id like to see a breakdown on which scientists are getting paid and by whom in all their works.

Most of the scientists I know make a salary and that's it. A $ 100 honorarium (say for giving a talk to the public) is regarded as a big deal.

Comment This is politics, not technology (Score 2, Insightful) 389

When will people get it through their heads that this is really all about the acceleration of the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy, and is fundamentally a political matter, not a technical matter?

From TFA "The report calls for a long-term plan to make economic growth inclusive." We had that. It was called the New Deal, and it was dismantled in the 1980's by the Reagan Administration.

Comment Secret Agreements, bah. (Score 5, Insightful) 154

I personally don't care what the TPP terms are, the process is irredeemably corrupt. It is an attempt for corporations to obtain in secret negotiations what they could never obtain through actual democratic processes, and should be opposed by anyone who supports our system of government.

If they want to enact this, publish it, and submit it as a Treaty to the Senate for ratification. We have a Constitution for a reason, quit trying to do an end-run around it.

Comment Muon images of the shadow of the moon (Score 5, Informative) 68

Muon shadowgraphs of the Moon, a signature of the Moon's cosmic ray shadow on the upper atmosphere, are a common way of testing neutrino detectors buried under a km or more of rock. (Muons from the atmosphere tend to be the major source of confusion for such detectors; that's why they frequently do best looking down, as muons can't go through 12,000 km of rock.)

Oh, and archeologists have used muons to look through the Great Pyramid.

Comment NIAC != NASA (Score 1) 119

NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts is a way of giving relatively small amounts of money ($100,000) to outside researchers to begin to flesh out advanced ideas. One hundred K is not going to buy you a fully designed Titan submarine. So, this is a idea, but not much more, and may have little or even no resemblance to NASA thinking, NASA plans or anything that is actually done later.

Comment Don't buy the fracking TV's (Score 2) 309

Don't buy the blasted TV's - or, if you do, don't connect them to the Internet (and put some metallic tape over the camera).

It makes me feel like an old codger to say it, but I really don't understand why this is even an issue, or why anyone on the planet would want these "features," except maybe for use in prisons.

Comment Re:Let's see if that works... (Score 1) 283

This would be a lot clearer if the USA had signed The Moon Treaty, but it seems quite clear that if Bigelow Airspace wants to land on the Moon and claim part of it for themselves then the USA would be responsible for their actions there and Bigelow would be unable to do anything that the government of the USA could not also do under the Outer Space Treaty.

The only loophole that I can see is the usual one, which is "I know I'm breaking the rules that we all agreed to, but you can't stop me."

No it would not. There is a reason why no major space-faring nation has adopted the Moon Treaty. It is gone for good, and it is good it is gone.

Comment Re:As usual ... (Score 1) 283

That's an incredibly ignorant comment. The Outer Space Treaty fairly explicitly recognizes the right for a nation to enforce the property and activity rights of its citizens in space. It's one of the primary reasons for the treaty existing at all. The FAA isn't saying Americans will own parts of the moon. It is saying that if I spend a billion dollars to build a mining company up there, it's not going to let someone else mine in the exact same place while my operations are actively going on, since it might damage my investment up there and discourage further exploration or development. And once I've pulled up stakes, anyone can move in there.

It's a pretty damn sensible approach, actually.

Correct. The OST gives nation states the power and the responsibility to apply their laws to the actions of their citizens in space.

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